If the Dead Belong Here

Between 1830 and 1850, the U.S. government’s forced displacement known as the Trail of Tears removed thousands of Native Americans from their ancestral lands in the Southeastern United States. But according to Native folklore, some Indigenous people evaded the Removal, sheltered by supernatural Little People. Faust’s atmospheric debut focuses on a family descended from those survivors and the generational trauma they have endured. When six-year-old Laurel Taylor vanishes from her Wisconsin home early one morning in 1996, her devastated mother, Ayita, believes her abusive ex-husband Barron kidnapped their daughter, even though Barron had abandoned the family before Ayita realized she was pregnant. But as weeks pass by and Laurel remains missing, Nadine, her older sister, begins experiencing nightmares and hearing whispers, especially in the tree house where Laurel always played. Have the Little People taken Lauren or are other family ghosts responsible? To find answers, Nadine travels with her Aunt Rosebud to South Carolina, where her fractured family has deep roots. Faust, an enrolled member of the Edisto Natchez-Kusso Tribe of South Carolina, draws on his family history and Indigenous mythology to weave a haunting tale of loss and redemption that may remind some readers of Keith Donohue’s The Stolen Child with a touch of Poltergeist.