Set in contemporary New Orleans but working its way back in time,  SMALL HOTEL chronicles the relationship between Michael and Kelly Hays, who have decided to separate after 24 years of marriage.

The book begins on the day that the Hays are to finalize their divorce. Kelly is due to be in court, but instead she drives from her home in Pensacola, Florida, across the panhandle to New Orleans and checks into Room 303 at the Olivier House in the city’s French Quarter --- the hotel where she and Michael fell in love some 25 years earlier and where she now finds herself about to make a decision that will forever affect her, Michael, and their 19-year-old daughter, Samantha.

An intelligent, deeply moving, and remarkably written portrait of a relationship that reads as a cross between a romance novel and a literary page turner, A SMALL HOTEL is a masterful story that will remind readers once again why Robert Olen Butler has been called the “best living American writer” (Jeff Guinn, Fort Worth Star-Telegram).