Ghost Songs: A Memoir

A searingly beautiful coming-of-age memoir about a girl who begins to see her parents' ghosts after their tragic deaths.

An Oprah.com Editor's Pick and a Paris Review Staff Pick

Eighteen-year-old Regina McBride is haunted by the ghosts of her parents. Her father visits her―he is desperate, but she doesn’t know how to help him. Her mother is a quiet figure, obscured by light―a flash at the foot of the bed. Regina, raised Irish Catholic and with the ironclad belief that some sins are unforgivable, fears her parents are trapped between worlds, forever punished after they committed suicide within a few months of each other.

Terrorized by these visitations and flattened by grief, Regina slowly begins her hazardous journey to recovery. Lyrical and lovely, harrowing and haunting, Ghost Songs charts her struggle to separate madness from imagination and sorrow from devastation. From New York to the desert of New Mexico to the shores of Ireland, Regina searches for herself, her home, and a way to return to the family that remains. Ghost Songs is an exploration of memory, a meditation on love and loss, and, in the end, a celebration of life and the living.