A Novel by Joyce Allen

When Iris Layton moves into her raw new subdivision house after her divorce, she wants to start over without history. But even her scrap of a lot has its history, she learns. The weedy tangle at its end conceals the remnants of an old farmhouse, and if you believe the local tales, the ghost of a long ago resident, Hannah Davis. Iris does not buy the stories, but she finds herself haunted by Hannah in another way. She finds connections with this vanished woman that fill a need in her own life as she faces a threat that has nothing to do with ghosts. In her own time Hannah Davis, too, is alone and haunted by her past and her memories. Hannah is sought out as a practitioner of native medicine, but as a woman of an uncertain race and an unfamiliar culture, she remains a lifelong outsider. Now that a dying girl has been left at her door, she learns also that she may be in real danger.

Two lives,
two centuries,
one place.

"If you've ever laid your hands on the stones of an old foundation and felt the history in their mossy chill, then Hannah's House is a book for you. Alternating between past and present, Joyce Allen shows us how much we share with our ghosts, and how our ghosts seek us out even in our spanking new houses. A fine read that will keep you turning the pages from first to last."
Nancy Peacock - author of A Broom of One's Own: Words on Writing, Housecleaning and Life

"A haunting and evocative tale of two eras and two women, living on the same land but separated by more than a century, each exploring her solitude and her identity in a rapidly changing world in which there's little safety or solid ground. The two stories mirror one another across time and accumulate meaning until, subtly but unmistakably, the reader catches a glimpse of her own life and that of her sisters reflected in the narrative."
Jodie Forrest - www.sevenpawspress.com, author of The Ascendant

photo by Mary Michael

Hannah's House

published 2008,
by Wolf's Pond Press
Chapel Hill, NC

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