American Ghost A Novel
American Ghost A Novel by Janis Owens is a first edition published by Scribner on October 9, 2012, featuring 288 pages in English. This novel draws inspiration from a true event, delving into unresolved family histories and racial tensions that impact a Florida community. The story follows Jolie Hoyt, a Southern girl from Hendrix, who navigates her family’s secrets and the complexities of love when she meets Sam Lense, a Jewish anthropology student. Their relationship is tested by the dark racial history of the town, leading to tragic consequences.
Readers will find a narrative that intertwines themes of cultural heritage and gothic elements, as Jolie and Sam confront their past twelve years after their initial romance. The return of a black businessman from Memphis prompts a reckoning with the town’s history and the unresolved issues of their youthful love. American Ghost presents a richly woven exploration of how past events continue to influence the present, making it a significant addition to contemporary Southern fiction.
Official synopsis Publisher
An engrossing novel inspired by a true event about unresolved family history and racial tensions that threaten a Florida community.
JOLIE HOYT IS A GOOD SOUTHERN GIRL living in Hendrix, a small Florida Panhandle town. The daughter of a Pentecostal preacher who sells insurance on the side, and the best friend of a lively beauty who moves to the big city to pursue a career in interior design, Jolie is all too aware of her family’s closet full of secrets and long-held distrust of outsiders. Nevertheless, she throws caution to the wind when she meets Sam Lense, a Jewish anthropology student from Miami, who is in town to study the ethnic makeup of the region.
Jolie and Sam fall recklessly in love and dream of beginning a life together, far away from Jolie’s buried past. But their affair ends abruptly when Sam is discovered to have pried too deeply into Hendrix’s dark racial history and he 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, Jolie and Sam are brought together again. They are forced to revisit the unresolved issues of their young love and finally shed light on the ugly history of Jolie’s hometown.
A complex and compulsively readable Southern saga, continuing in the tradition established by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and brought into the new millennium by writers like Karen Russell and Kathryn Stockett, American Ghost was inspired by Janis Owens’s extensive research on a real lynching that occurred in 1934 in Marianna, Florida.
American Ghost is a richly woven exploration of how the events of our past haunt our present.
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