A ghost is not what you think it is, says Raven. A ghost is a commitment. When Laraine Herring receives an unexpected colon cancer diagnosis, her father, thirty years dead, returns to her as a raven, setting off a magical journey into complicated grief, inherited trauma, and ancestral healing. As she struggles with redefining her expectations for her life, she slips further and further underground into the ancestral realm, where she finds herself writing a play directed by her father-as-raven. Raven says, It will be a cast of only four: you and me and my mother and my father, and we will speak until there are no more words between us. And then you can decide the ending. Tick, tock, write.A Constellation of Ghosts takes the reader into the liminal spaces between one world and another, where choices unspool into lives, and the stories we’ve told ourselves fall apart under the scrutiny of multiple perspectives like flesh from bone, reminding us that grief is the unexpected ferryman who can usher all of us back together again.
"Laraine Herring has written a groundbreaking, breathtaking tour de force here, excavating personal and ancestral trauma as she blazes forth new possibilities for both narrative and healing.A Constellation of Ghostsis reckoning and revelation, deeply embodied, wholly visionary. This book is unlike anything you’ve ever read; this book will rock you to the marrow and leave you changed." —Gayle Brandeis, author ofThe Art of Misdiagnosis
"Gripping in its honesty,A Constellation of Ghostsis an incredible journey of self-discovery, revelation, mourning and healing. I am awed by the strength and courage it took to write such a raw, personal book." —Rick Hamilton, filmmaker and director (Seeing Glory) —Rick Hamilton, www.rickhamilton.nyc
"Laraine Herring’sA Constellation of Ghostsendearingly broachel'