“Reads like a suspense novel…I couldn’t put it down!”
“The best memoir I’ve read in very, very long time.”
“At its core, a love story…”
Praise for Inn Mates
“As a veteran travel writer, I know how hard it is to take the experience of place and turn it into a story: a really good one, full of joy, and tension and mystery. In Inn Mates, her charming memoir of inn-keeping in Maine, Teri Anderholm pulls off this rare kink of alchemy – turning the pine-scented coastline of Bar Harbor into a narrative you keep coming back to.”
—Peter Mandel, Lowell Thomas Award-winning travel journalist for The Washington Post and The Boston Globe, and the author of ‘Bun, Onion, Burger’
“Inn Mates is a beautifully written account of the innkeeping life. Hilarious and heartbreaking. Full of wisdom, wit, and whimsy. The best memoir I’ve read in a very very long time.”
—Claudia Hunter Johnson, author of Stifled Laughter: One Woman’s Story About Fighting Censorship, winner of the 2023 Best Book Awards in the Current Events category, and Hurtling Toward Happiness: A Mother and Teenage Son’s Road Trip From Blues to Bonding in a Really Small Car
“Ever dream of running an inn? With lively prose, 3-D detail, great humor and strong honesty, Inn Mates is a fascinating visit to one such dream, told from the perspective of a 15-year innkeeper who’s a delight of a guide…Anderholm tells it all in a story still as delicious and memorable as the creme brulee French toast she once served…”
—Suzanne Strempek Shea, author of This Is Paradise: An Irish Mother’s Grief, an African Village’s Plight and the Medical Clinic That Brought Fresh Hope to Both
“Teri’s beautifully crafted memoir reads like a novel; a young couple in love who risk all to pursue their dream of opening an inn in Bar Harbor, Maine. Both witty and deeply personal, Inn Mates describes the joys and sorrows of the hospitality business from extensive renovations to zany guests, ethereal ghosts and scrumptious gourmet meals. I was swept away!”
—Margaret Jones, author of Walking Sacred Sites: Listening to their Story
“Teri Anderholm’s Inn Mates is, at its core, a love story. She and her partner changed their lives; with no clue what they were doing, they quit their jobs and put their life savings into a dilapidated inn on the coast of Maine. Unlike most of us, they did not end up broke and divorced and with bitter acrimony, but somehow created a hearth, a welcoming beacon for travelers in the night. This is their journey; every floorboard that had to be replaced, every fixture, every setback, and the larger triumph as well.”
—Charles Bock, NYT bestselling author of Beautiful Children, Alice & Oliver, and I Will Do Better