Laraine Herring

Ghost Swamp Blues Laraine Herring

How far would you go to protect someone you love?

Nothing is black or white in the murky town of Alderman, North Carolina, no matter how much the human and ghostly residents of Idyllic Grove Rice Plantation would like it to be. Weaving together the threads of three women rooted by life or death to this haunted Southern landscape, Ghost Swamp Blues pulls the reader into the layers of racism, family loyalties, and hidden relationships that intertwine as naturally as the kudzu that covers the trees where the Swamp Sirens sing.

Fourteen-year-old Lillian Green witnesses the unthinkable in 1949. Her choice to remain silent about what she saw ripples into the swamp water surrounding her family's home, awakening the ghost of Roberta du Bois, former rice plantation mistress, who drowned herself in the swamp in 1859. Roberta and Lillian forge a bond based on shame, silence, and an impenetrable loneliness. When Lillian's daughter Hannah is born into the maze of haunted hallways, Lillian has no interest in raising her. Hannah is left alone, with only Roberta and her own exceptional singing voice for company. When the truth about what Lillian saw surfaces, no one, living or dead, can prevent what must come next.