The Spirits

Review Quotes:
Between the lines of this rollicking, haunted, humorous, aural, and choral Christmas Eve retelling of a family story grisly enough to make a reader squint, meanders one of the most accurate self-loathing-and-yet-somehow-determined-to-not-just-survive-but-thrive voices of a young woman battered by an abusive, patriarchal, tyrant than any I have ever heard. I relate to Sister so fully and deeply, the hair stood up on the back of my neck. A haunting and a healing, all at once.--Pam Houston, author of Animals Taught Me Everything

Jacket Description/Back:

Praise for The Waters

"Bonnie Jo Campbell knows rural Michigan right down to the vertical pupils of the massasauga rattlesnake. For almost 25 years, in her celebrated novels and story collections, she's been charting streams and hauling logs to construct her own space in the literature of Midwestern gothic."
--Ron Charles, Washington Post

"Bonnie Jo Campbell proves her mastery of Midwestern Gothic in The Waters. . . . Lush, brackish, and bracing."
--Yvonne Zipp, Christian Science Monitor

"On a swampy island in Michigan, an outcast herbalist and her granddaughter contend with traumatic family secrets and an absent mother in this vividly drawn corner of rural America."
--New York Times Book Review

Bonnie Jo Campbell, a master of rural American fiction, brings us a hair-raising winter tale to warm us by the fireside. In this contemporary Christmas Carol, Campbell has created a gritty, spooky, and ultimately heartening holiday story that unfolds in an isolated farmhouse. It is the night before Christmas in a small town in Michigan, and a young woman is haunted by her father's death. She has been silently penitent for nine years, but her guilt and grief have estranged her from her community and her family. She has taken refuge in the natural world of the plants and trees she tends, but on this anniversary of the tragedy, the supernatural landscape is rattling its chains.

When a surprise guest appears at the (dreaded) Christmas Eve dinner, the family begins to open up and reveal dangerous secrets and crimes nobody is willing to face. Within this darkest chaos, a sliver of light appears, showing a way to reclaim communion and even a sense of humor. While redemption is never easy or wholesale, the story that a family creates together can heal wounds.

Contributor Bio:Campbell, Bonnie Jo
Bonnie Jo Campbell is the author of seven works of fiction, including The Waters, a national bestseller, and American Salvage, finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, she lives outside Kalamazoo, Michigan, with her husband and donkeys.