The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts

A dazzling debut novel weaving together Caribbean myth and the contemporary story of multiple generations of one immigrant family

Sisters Zora and Sasha Porter are drifting apart. Bearing witness to their father's violence and their mother's worsening illness, an unsettled Zora escapes into her journal, dreaming of being a writer, while Sasha discovers sex and chest binding, spending more time with her new girlfriend than at home.

But the sisters, like their parents, must come together to answer to beings greater than themselves and reckon with a family secret buried in the past. A tale told from the perspective of a mischievous narrator, featuring the Rolling Calf who haunts butchers, Mama Dglo who lives in the ocean, a vain tiger and an outsmarted snake, The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter & Other Essential Ghosts is an extraordinary debut novel, a celebration of the power of stories which asks — what happens to us when our stories are erased? Do we disappear? Or do we come back haunting?

'A brilliant, compelling exploration of familial legacies. A mythic and edifying read' — Irenosen Okojie, author of Speak Gigantular