Maisy Card's compelling debut novel, These Ghosts Are Family, takes place in multiple locations, from 1820s Jamaica to Brooklyn, N.Y., in 2020, and follows an extended Jamaican family who struggle to rise above poverty and racism while dealing with the effects of betrayal.
The novel opens in 2005, introducing Stanford Solomon, an elderly Harlem resident; decades earlier, while working in London, he took his dead co-worker's name, Abel Paisley, to escape his family in Jamaica, effectively "killing" himself. His deception is his secret, and Abel decides, as his health fails, to gather his extended double family in order to tell his story. He is told that "you will finally tell them the truth; you are not who you say you are." The speaker goes on to scold him, calling him the thief of Solomon's death. "Where is his soul now...? Isn't it about time you gave him his due?"
With this as background, episodes and people in Abel's life, both dead and alive, unfold in multiple voices and over vast swaths of time. These episodes are presented asynchronously, actively engaging readers in piecing together the puzzle of a family that doesn't know how or if they all fit together.
Themes of deception and abandonment occur again and again, and Card shows how these acts spread and stain across generations. Born in St. Catherine, Jamaica, and raised in Queens, N.Y., she has spoken of her "big, messy Jamaican family" and that she came to understand how events, even those from generations earlier, could tear a family apart. Card's is a powerful new voice. --Cindy Pauldine, bookseller, the river's end bookstore, Oswego, N.Y.