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American Ghost: A Family's Extraordinary History on the Desert Frontier Kindle Edition
“Journalist Hannah Nordhaus braids personal memoir with historical research and resolute ghost hunting in a narrative that investigates the restless spirit of her great-great-grandmother Julia Schuster Staab.” —Boston Globe
La Posada—“place of rest”—was 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. Strange things began 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 modern phantom. Family 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 help of historians, genealogists, family members, 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 become legends, and what those legends tell us about who we are.
“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 really was—and what strange alchemy made the idea of her linger long after she was gone.” —People
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHarper
- Publication dateMarch 10, 2015
- File size8419 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“In this intriguing book, [Nordhaus] shares her journey to discover who her immigrant ancestor really was - and what strange alchemy made the idea of her linger long after she was gone.” — People
“Whether you believe in ghosts or are just intrigued by their persistence in popular culture, American Ghost is itself a haunting story about the long reach of the past.” — Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air
“Expertly dissects fact from embroidery. . . . A colorful and engrossing quest.” — Elle, "7 Must-Read Books"
“Nordhaus attacks her subject with the same scholarship and lively writing that made her nonfiction debut, The Beekeeper’s Lament, a beloved best-seller. . . . Fascinating.” — Dallas Morning News
“The more Nordhaus digs into the history and explores the supernatural dimensions of the story, the more complex and intriguing it becomes. American Ghost is a multi-genre work that succeeds on a number of levels.” — Denver Post
“Journalist Hannah Nordhaus braids personal memoir with historical research and resolute ghost hunting in a narrative that investigates the restless spirit of her great-great-grandmother Julia Schuster Staab.” — Boston Globe
“A gripping account of frontier life from an immigrant Jewish woman’s perspective. It is the author’s connection of the past where she explores the story, trying to separate the history and the myth.” — Working Mother
“Part travelogue, part memoir, part ghost story, part history. . . . Nordhaus offers a deeply compelling personal account of her attempts to better understand her own family. . . . The book’s unique blend of genres and its excellent writing make it hard to put down.” — Booklist (starred review)
“[A] funny, moving, and suspenseful tale.” — The Week
“The author’s multifaceted work brings Julia back to life and explores the journey it took to rediscover her narrative. . . . Every aspect of the account is enlightening, well written, and entertaining. This touching and uplifting work is highly recommended and will appeal to a variety of readers.” — Library Journal (starred review)
“An incredible story. . . . A haunting tale.” — National Examiner
“A fascinating and nuanced account of her ancestral ghost story and her complicated clan.” — BookPage
“A unique collision of family history, Wild West adventure, and ghost story. . . . Perceptive, witty, and engaging.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Fascinating and frequently surprising. Ultimately, American Ghost is a reflection on how the unresolved questions in our own histories can be even more haunting than ghosts.” — Shelf Awareness
“Tenaciously researched and beautifully written, American Ghost gives flesh to a lost story, exhumes a bygone world, and animates the ways in which the past haunts all of us. Hannah Nordhaus has performed a lyrical feat of dead-raising.” — Benjamin Wallace, author of The Billionaire's Vinegar
“Beautifully written and self-aware, a memoir that tells a story and searches for broader lessons. . . . Ultimately, American Ghost is not just the story of a haunting, but a story that will haunt its readers.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune
“A thoughtful and intriguing chronicle of familial investigation.” — Kirkus Reviews
“American Ghost is at once an engrossing portrait of a forgotten female pioneer and a fascinating meditation on the fine line between history and lore. Hannah Nordhaus has crafted a seamless blend of gripping mystery, moving family confessional, and chilling ghost story.” — Karen Abbott, New York Times bestselling author of Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy
“Here is a very different sort of a Western, a deeply feminine story with a strong whiff of the paranormal--Willa Cather meets Stephen King. Don’t read this book late at night . . . unless you like feeling your neck hairs stand up on end!” — Hampton Sides, author of In the Kingdom of Ice and Blood and Thunder
“Hannah Nordhaus approaches the legend of her great-great-grandmother’s ghost with the insight of an historian and the energy of an inspired detective. A fine tale well told. I loved every word.” — Anne Hillerman, author of Spider Woman's Daughter
“A spirited memoir of one of the earliest Jewish pioneer families in the West. . . . A delightful travelogue.” — JWeekly.com
“Hannah Nordhaus braids personal memoir with historical research and resolute ghost hunting in a narrative that investigates the restless spirit of her great-great-grandmother Julia Schuster Staab.” — Boston Globe
“Hannah Nordhaus writes a detective story, although it’s not fiction, and a ghost story, although it’s not a chiller. It’s biography and history and the product of investigative research, yet everything of power, even scholarly process, must come from the heart, and so does this story.” — Washington Independent Review of Books
“A spirited memoir of one of the earliest Jewish pioneer families in the American West…A delightful travelogue…reads like a novel.” — Jewish Book Council
“All of us are haunted ― by vestiges of the past, and, as Hannah Nordhaus poignantly observes in American Ghost, by the ghosts of who we thought we were or thought we would become.” — Boulder Weekly
Nordhaus’s lyrical memoir … untangles truth and legend, the tale of success and the hardships of life, the woman and the ghost.” — Jewish Woman Magazine
“[A] chronicle of German-Jewish immigration to the American Southwest, a reckoning of family secrets, and an account of the author’s personal ghost hunt.” — Santa Fe New Mexican
“Nordhaus takes us on a journey back in time ― by any means possible ― in order to draw a better picture of who her great-great-grandmother was.” — Washington Post
From the Back Cover
La Posada—“place of rest”—was 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. Strange things began 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 modern phantom. Family 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 help of historians, genealogists, family members, 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 become legends, and what those legends tell us about who we are.About the Author
Hannah Nordhaus is the author of the critically acclaimed national bestseller The Beekeeper’s Lament, which was a PEN Center USA Book Awards finalist, Colorado Book Awards finalist, and National Federation of Press Women Book Award winner. She has written for the Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, Outside magazine, the Times Literary Supplement, Village Voice, and many other publications.
Product details
- ASIN : B00KPV5B7Q
- Publisher : Harper; Reprint edition (March 10, 2015)
- Publication date : March 10, 2015
- Language : English
- File size : 8419 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 341 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #481,268 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #506 in Popular Culture
- #935 in Supernaturalism (Books)
- #1,219 in History eBooks of Women
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors
Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more
Hannah Nordhaus is the national bestselling author of The Beekeeper’s Lament (HarperCollins, 2011) and American Ghost (HarperCollins, 2015).
American Ghost, her latest book, explores the life and legend of Julia Staab, Hannah’s great-great-grandmother, who traveled the Santa Fe Trail to New Mexico in 1866 as a mail-order German-Jewish bride, and whose ghost is reputed to haunt an elegant hotel in Santa Fe. In American Ghost, Hannah examines Julia Staab’s life and deconstructs her ghost story, tracing Julia’s path from Europe through the American Southwest, rifling through archives and diaries and old newspapers, and meeting with historians, genealogists, aging relatives, and ghost-hunters in order to explore the hazy boundary between history and myth. “Whether you believe in ghosts,” said NPR’s Fresh Air, “or are just intrigued by their persistence in popular culture, American Ghost is itself a haunting story about the long reach of the past.”
American Ghost, a national bestseller, has seen critical acclaim from the People Magazine, Elle Magazine, the Boston Globe, Entertainment Weekly, the Denver Post, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, and many other newspapers and magazines. It received starred pre-publication reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist and Library Journal, and was named one of “20 Books We’ll Read in 2015″ by Entertainment Weekly and one of Elle Magazine’s “7 Must-Read Books for March.”
Hannah’s previous bestselling book, The Beekeeper’s Lament, is a non-fiction portrait of a fourth-generation beekeeper struggling to keep his bees alive in the middle of a strange and sobering honey bee die-off. Said the Boston Globe: “The Beekeeper’s Lament is at once science lesson, sociological study, and breezy read…. A book about bees could easily descend into academe, but the author settles for nothing less than literature.”
The Beekeeper’s Lament was a PEN Center USA Book Awards finalist, a Colorado Book Awards finalist, and a National Federation of Press Women Book Award winner, receiving enthusiastic reviews from the Washington Post, Wall St. Journal, the Associated Press, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Mother Jones, Audubon, Boingboing.net and dozens of newspapers, magazines, and websites, and appearing on a number of year-end “best of” lists. In 2011, the literary magazine The Millions featured this interview with Hannah about the art and craft of writing book-length narrative nonfiction, calling it a “veritable how-to for writing a book of journalistic non-fiction.”
Hannah’s nonfiction writing has appeared in the Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, Outside Magazine, Times Literary Supplement (TLS), Ski Magazine, High Country News, The Village Voice, and many other publications, covering such subjects as litigious prostitutes in Montana; snorkeling salmon-counters in Idaho; wildlife crime investigators in Oregon; and dildo-art thieves and dog-poop mappers in Boulder, Colorado. From 2007 to 2009, she was also outdoors columnist for the Denver Rocky Mountain News.
After receiving degrees in history and American Studies from Yale University and the University of Colorado, Hannah bounced from New Mexico to New York to San Francisco to the Himalayas. She finally settled in Boulder, Colorado, where she lives with her husband, two children, zero beehives, and an unspecified number of ghosts.
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This is a true story and one that is pretty amazing as well. It takes you from Europe to the South-West and back again. The author did a great job of investigating all matters of these people's lives. She truly did all the leg work by going to each location. This keeps the book's flow going and it moves right along in a seamless manner.
The only thing I didn't agree with - was her 'conclusions' about certain events. She put her own focus of reality onto these people. First at the beginning she was sure of this or that fact only to find out she was wrong. Later on she uses psychics and other methods of trying to learn about Julia and her family. I don't mind psychics at all. However, I don't think you can 'assume' they are always correct.
However, since this is her very own relative and it's her book - she, as the author, has every right to put forth her own ideas and assumptions whether they are right or wrong. As a genealogist - you must rely strictly to facts that have proof on documents. As a person who is just trying to learn about her family - you don't have to rely only on documents or proof. There is room for speculation and/or conjecture in just story telling.
Basically - if you like true stories about real people from the past - I don't see why you wouldn't like this book. It does take you on a journey and ends up with results that were unknown & unexpected. I think Julia would be proud of her descendant for caring enough to do all the research and asking the hard questions.
Hopefully this is one ghost who can now be at peace and who can move on to where-ever ghosts go to.
This is not a light summer beach read. This is a book that asks you to think about your place in the world and your connection to the past.
Nordhaus starts her book by explaining that beginning in the 1970s, sightings were reported of a woman's ghost haunting La Posada, a hotel in Santa Fe. In the past, Las Posada had been the home of Staab, built for her and her children in the 19th century when the world of the American Southwest was still very raw and wild.
Using these stories as a way to introduce the mysterious, but troubled life, of her great-great-grandmother, Nordhaus dives into history, both personal and cultural, to find the truth of Julia's life and her death. During Nordhaus's journey, she consults psychics, takes a DNA test, reads family journals and old newspapers, and even travels to the old hotel itself in hopes of finding answers.
Thus, American Ghost is more than a ghost story. It's a story of two women: one who found herself struggling to find her place in a foreign desert land and the other searching for answers about a past that may never be clearly articulated.