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These Ghosts are Family: A Novel Audiobook
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*An Entertainment Weekly, Millions, and LitHub Most-Anticipated Book of 2020 pick*
*A Rumpus and Electric Literature Most-Anticipated Debut of 2020 pick*
*A Ms. Magazine Top Feminist Book Coming Out in 2020*
*A BookRiot Best Book Club Pick of 2020*
*A Celadon Books Most-Anticipated Novel of 2020*
*A Lily Top Book to Read by Women in 2020 Selection*
*A Buzz Magazine Top New Book of the New Decade*
*A She Reads Most-Anticipated Historical Fiction Pick of 2020*
A transporting debut novel that reveals the ways in which a Jamaican family forms and fractures over generations, in the tradition of Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi.
Stanford Solomon has a shocking, thirty-year-old secret. And it’s about to change the lives of everyone around him. Stanford Solomon is actually Abel Paisley, a man who faked his own death and stole the identity of his best friend.
And now, nearing the end of his life, Stanford is about to meet his firstborn daughter, Irene Paisley, a home health aide who has unwittingly shown up for her first day of work to tend to the father she thought was dead.
These Ghosts are Family revolves around the consequences of Abel’s decision and tells the story of the Paisley family from colonial Jamaica to present day Harlem. There is Vera, whose widowhood forced her into the role of single mother. There are two daughters and a granddaughter who have never known they are related. And there are others, like the house boy who loved Vera, whose lives might have taken different courses if not for Abel Paisley’s actions.
These Ghosts Are Family explores the ways each character wrestles with their ghosts and struggles to forge independent identities outside of the family and their trauma. The result is an engrossing portrait of a family and individuals caught in the sweep of history, slavery, migration, and the more personal dramas of infidelity, lost love, and regret. This electric and luminous family saga announces the arrival of a new American talent.
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“Maisy Card is a beguiling storyteller, and These Ghosts Are Family is layered with fraught family relationships arising from complicated legacies.”
— BookPage (starred review)
Quotes
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“Character portraits…build into a centuries-spanning epic about race, trauma, and the weight of a lie.”
— Entertainment Weekly -
“Card’s ghosts bracingly remind us that no family history is comprehensive, that some riddles of ancestry and heritage persist beyond this lifetime.”
— New York Times Book Review -
“Card’s depiction of genealogy and historical research is spot-on.”
— BuzzFeed -
“Vividly drawn and compelling. There is magic in these pages.”
— BookPage (starred review)
Awards
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A BookPage Top Pick of the Month
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A New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice of the Week
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A Paste Magazine Pick of the Month's Best Audiobooks
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Longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize
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Longlistef for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel
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About Maisy Card
Maisy Card is the author of These Ghosts Are Family. Her writing has appeared in Lenny Letter, School Library Journal, Agni, Sycamore Review, Liars’ League NYC, and Ampersand Review. She was born in St. Catherine, Jamaica, and was raised in Queens, New York. She earned an MLIS from Rutgers University and a BA in English and American studies from Wesleyan University. She holds an MFA degree in fiction from Brooklyn College and is a public librarian with the Newark Public Library.
About Karl O’Brian Williams
Robin Miles, named a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine, has twice won the prestigious Audie Award for Best Narration, an Audie Award for directing, and many Earphones Awards. Her film and television acting credits include The Last Days of Disco, Primary Colors, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Law & Order, New York Undercover, National Geographic’s Tales from the Wild, All My Children, and One Life to Live. She regularly gives seminars to members of SAG and AFTRA actors’ unions, and in 2005 she started Narration Arts Workshop in New York City, offering audiobook recording classes and coaching. She holds a BA degree in theater studies from Yale University, an MFA in acting from the Yale School of Drama, and a certificate from the British American Drama Academy in England.