This Haunted Land: Reckoning with Ghosts and the Stories That Shape America - Hardcover

by Betsy Gaines Quammen (Author)

Why do humans need ghosts? And what do our ghosts have to teach us?

"Strikingly original."

--LIBRARY JOURNAL (starred review) ★

This Haunted Land investigates some of America's most enduring legends and uncovers how ghost stories can illuminate some of the most unsettling parts of history. With curiosity, a touch of skepticism, and an open-hearted willingness to learn from the living and the dead, Betsy Gaines Quammen takes readers on a journey into haunted towns, forgotten lives, and abandoned places. From a once-booming uranium mining community in Colorado to a fort on the coast of Florida that predates the United States itself, this riveting exploration of memory, mourning, folklore, and social anxiety shows that politicized efforts to rewrite history can only be defeated by bearing witness to the specters of the past.

Author Biography

BETSY GAINES QUAMMEN is the author of American Zion: Cliven Bundy, God, and Public Lands in the West and True West: Myth and Mending on the Far Side of America, winner of the Reading the West Book Award. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, New York Daily News, and History News Network. She holds a PhD from Montana State University and lives in Montana with her husband, writer David Quammen, and a bunch of scaly and furry rescued critters.