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American Ghost: A Family’s Extraordinary History on the Desert Frontier

Amazon.com Price:  $9.98 (as of 02/05/2019 20:18 PST- Details)

Description

“A haunting story about the long reach of the past.”—Maureen Corrigan, NPR’S Fresh Air

“In this intriguing book, [Nordhaus] shares her journey to discover who her immigrant ancestor in point of fact was once—and what Extraordinary alchemy made the idea of her linger long after she was once gone.” —People

La Posada—“place of rest”—was once once a grand Santa Fe mansion. It belonged to Abraham and Julia Staab, who emigrated from Germany in the mid-nineteenth century. After they died, the house became a hotel. And in the 1970s, the hotel acquired a resident ghost—a sad, dark-eyed woman in a long gown. Extraordinary things started to happen there: vases moved, glasses flew, blankets were ripped from beds. Julia Staab died in 1896—but her ghost, they say, lives on.

In American Ghost, Julia’s great-great-granddaughter, Hannah Nordhaus, traces her ancestor’s transfiguration from nineteenth-century Jewish bride to brand new phantom. Circle of relatives diaries, photographs, and newspaper clippings take her on a riveting journey through three hundred years of German history and the American immigrant experience. With the assistance of historians, genealogists, members of the family, and ghost hunters, she weaves a masterful, moving story of fin-de-siècle Europe and pioneer life, villains and visionaries, medicine and spiritualism, imagination and truth, exploring how lives develop into legends, and what those legends let us know about who we are.

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