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The dead are relentless gossips, or at least these dead are.
An impulsive and heartbroken woman inherits her father's share of a Tennessee farm that is rich in family secrets and occupied with busybody ghosts in this sweeping family portrait.
At thirty-two, Aubrey Lamb is stumbling into adulthood. An underpaid gig worker in Washington, DC, she's grieving the end of a serious relationship and the recent loss of her father. When Aubrey learns that she has inherited his share stake in a sizable Tennessee farm from her father, she sees an opportunity to get out of the city-and to erase a mounting pile of debt.
Watching her arrival with great interest are four ghosts-Aubrey's ancestors, who've staked their own claims to the farm, and who never hesitate to pass judgment on the mistakes made by the living, whether romantic, financial, or sartorial. As Aubrey reconnects with her living family, another story unfolds in parallel: the history of the land, beginning with its purchase by Thomas, Aubrey's great-grandfather and one of the first Black landowners in his community. Though Thomas hopes to give his children a homestead on which they could flourish, the land proves to be a burdensome inheritance. Over the years, it divides the family, turning Thomas's descendants against one another, culminating in a catastrophic tragedy that splinters the family and echoes through the decades.
Now, as the clock ticks on a potential sale of the farm, the ghosts fear expulsion from the home they've made, and Aubrey must weigh the hopes and burdens of her forebears with the very real needs of her future. An expansive family saga told with a wry and distinctly modern voice,
The Great Wherever is at once grand and intimate; it explores the ways we learn to define ourselves through and against our family, how we carry on after loss, and how the past lives on in all of us.
About the author
Shannon Sanders is the author of the linked short story collection Company, which won the 2024
Los Angeles Times Book Prizes' Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, was named a best book of 2023 by
Publishers Weekly and
Debutiful , and was shortlisted for the 2024 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous publications, including
One Story,
Sewanee Review, V
irginia Quarterly Review, and
Electric Literature, and received a PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. She lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, with her husband and three sons.
