Can the injustices of the past truly be redeemed? Or will they continue to entangle the future in a web of violence?
Siblings Rik and Jessa Hollie should be happy to be moving to Paradise, Massachusetts. Their stepdad, Gary, that moving to a "nice"—that is, white and middle-class—neighborhood will protect his family from the reality of a country full of paranoia, disasters and internal refugees. But on the first night in their new house, Jessa sees something strange and unsettling. A hallucination? No. Rik, her older brother has his own vision, equally strange and unsettling. The family soon learns that not only their house but their whole neighborhood is haunted by ghosts—the ghosts of black people whose gaping wounds speak of a terrible history.
With the help of their classmate Celisa, Rik and Jessa choose to find out who the ghosts are, why they are here and why now. The answers to those questions will force the family and their neighbors to confront long avoided truths and make a decision they never imagined they would face. Because the ghosts are here for a reason. And there are those in the neighborhood who will go to any length to be rid of them—including the unthinkable.
American Ghosts is a story about growing up in a country that pretends that race doesn't matter and class doesn't exist. It's a story of past violence and present survival, about finding conscience in a post conscience world. To find a way forward, the Hollies will have to listen to long ignored stories, make connections with people unlike themselves and forge identities in a strange new world.
