Sam Merlotte is a fictional character from the The Southern Vampire Mysteries/Sookie Stackhouse Series by author Charlaine Harris.Sam lives in the fictional town of Bon Temps, Louisiana, and is the owner of a bar named Merlotte's. Sam has strawberry blond hair with blue eyes. He is both a close friend of and the employer of mind-reading barmaid Sookie Stackhouse. Sam is a shape shifter. His biological mother was a shifter as well as his brother.