The Ghost Girl

Fifteen-year-old Phylice Berknowles has lost her father, and now she stands to lose everything else. An American cousin named Pinckney is arriving at the family estate of Kilgobbin to claim his inheritance, and Phyl can feel the familiar world she shared with her father dissolving around her. Left alone with her grief in a house that no longer feels like home, she must navigate the painful terrain between childhood and adulthood, where autonomy feels impossible and connection seems fraught with danger. A clash of tempers between Phyl and the brash American cousin ignites the story's central tension, but at its heart this is a quiet, aching portrait of a young woman learning that the people and places we love can be taken from us long before we're ready to let go. Written in the early 20th century, The Ghost Girl captures the particular loneliness of adolescence shadowed by loss, and the courage it takes to claim one's place in a world that insists on change.