Rent American Ghost: A Novel

Synopsis

A complex and compulsively readable novel about how unresolved family history and the racial tensions of the past threaten a love affair between two young Floridians.

Growing up in a small Panhandle town, Jolie Hoyt was too aware of her family's closet full of secrets and long-held distrust of outsiders. Yet she throws caution to the wind when she meets Sam Lense, a Jewish anthropology student from Miami, visiting town to study the ethnic makeup of the region.

Jolie and Sam's affair ends abruptly when he is discovered to have pried too deeply into the area's dark racial history, and becomes the latest victim in a long tradition of small-town violence. Twelve years later, when a black businessman from Memphis returns to Hendrix to do right by his father's memory, the two young lovers meet again, and they are forced to revisit the unresolved issues of their past and finally shed light on the ugly history of Jolie's hometown.

"Part-thriller, part romance, and based on an actual event in the author's hometown, this wrenching novel is a fine example of southern storytelling" (People).

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