June Hudson runs the Avallon, a grand hotel built over mineral springs in the West Virginia mountains, and she came up from the hollers to do it. In 1942 the State Department requisitions the place to intern Axis diplomats and their families for the duration — Germans, Japanese, Italians, with their own chefs and their own politics, held in luxury behind a fence with an FBI agent watching. June has to keep the hotel running and the guests from killing each other. Under it all is the sweetwater in the springs, which behaves in ways the book never fully explains and everyone local understands.
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