The Innkeeper Tales – Modern-Day Canterbury Tales to Entertain, Enlighten & Empower

“You can’t make this stuff up.” You hear this refrain many times throughout The Innkeeper Tales . Modeled loosely on Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales , this collection of stories is told by business travelers whiling away a long day, stranded at The Abacrombie by an early spring blizzard. With Herman (the real-life Abacrombie owner) keeping the food and conversations going, each traveler tells a story drawn from his own life. All the stories are true, coming from conversations heard in the inn’s breakfast room. Several men talk about how their career paths diverged quickly and completely from their original intent (and training). One talks about his Air Force experience. The “rebuilder” confesses his uncontrollable urge to make shiny new things out of collapsing old things. Tony, “the car guy”, is moved to describe his many beauties and clunkers. A collector of rare books explains how he got hooked, inspiring another to share his tale of becoming addicted to his wife’s auction scavenging and furniture restoration. But at the heart of the Tales is another kind of the rebuilding of lives, the refurbishing of the teller’s sense of self. Like the listeners sprawled in the inn’s breakfast room, the reader of The Innkeeper Tales will have a rich learning and laughing experience, with a big surprise at the end.