Gone Dead

<p><strong>A <em>TONIGHT SHOW</em> SUMMER READS FINALIST</strong></p><p><strong>An electrifying first novel from a riveting new voice in American fiction (George Saunders): A young woman returns to her childhood home in the American South and uncovers secrets about her father's life and death</strong></p><p></p><p>Billie James' inheritance isn't much: a little money and a shack in the Mississippi Delta. The house once belonged to her father a renowned black poet who died unexpectedly when Billie was four years old. Though Billie was there when the accident happened she has no memory of that day--and she hasn't been back to the South since.</p><p> Thirty years later Billie returns but her father's home is unnervingly secluded: her only neighbors are the McGees the family whose history has been entangled with hers since the days of slavery. As Billie encounters the locals she hears a strange rumor: that she herself went missing on the day her father died. As the mystery intensifies she finds out that this forgotten piece of her past could put her in danger.</p><p>Inventive gritty and openhearted <em>The Gone Dead</em> is an astonishing debut novel about race justice and memory that lays bare the long-concealed wounds of a family and a country.</p>