The Big White Hotel is Calling My Name

The Luther Hotel is located on the Texas Gulf Coast in the small town of Palacios. You can walk out the front door across a lush, green lagoon and, a few seconds later, have your feet in the water.

In 1999, my husband and I hugged the coastline from Rockport to Galveston. When we drove through Palacios, the glittered water of the Gulf of Mexico and the shorebirds and wading birds held our attention. Not once did we turn our heads to the left to check out what was on the other side of the road. We repeated the trip a few months later, and that’s when we noticed the white wooden three-story hotel. How could we have missed it the first time? At the time, I was piecing together Murder at the Arlington and had the Galvez Hotel on my list as a future setting for the series. But this big, white hotel wouldn’t leave me alone. On that second trip, we met innkeepers Billy and Dolly Hamlin, who were living at the hotel and running it for Dolly’s cousin, Clare Joy.

Billy showed us every nook and cranny, boasting of the hotel’s intriguing history. Before we left, we had reservations for the next month. This time, Billy put us in the La Salle suite on the third floor because even after two trips, Billy told us we were family. Once, I attempted to calculate the total number of nights we stayed at the Luther, and I came up with close to fifty. The Luther Hotel was our…