The Great Wherever (Reese's Book Club)
A Novel
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4.1 • 35 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK • BOOK OF THE MONTH PICK • Named a Most Anticipated book by NPR, People, Oprah Daily, Esquire, and more
“A wonderful novel about family and tradition, perfect for the holidays.” —Reese Witherspoon
An impulsive and heartbroken woman inherits her father’s share of a Tennessee farm that is rich in family secrets and occupied with busybody ghosts in this sweeping family portrait.
The dead are relentless gossips, or at least these dead are. . .
At thirty-two, Aubrey Lamb is stumbling through adulthood. Underpaid and working multiple jobs in Washington, DC, she’s grieving the end of a serious relationship and the recent loss of her father. When Aubrey learns she has inherited his stake in a sizable Tennessee farm, she sees an opportunity to get out of the city—and to erase a mounting pile of debt.
Watching her arrival with great interest are four ghosts—Aubrey’s ancestors, who’ve staked their own claims to the farm and who never hesitate to pass judgment on the mistakes made by the living, be they romantic, financial, or sartorial. As Aubrey reconnects with her living family, another story unfolds in parallel: the history of the land, beginning with its purchase by Thomas, Aubrey’s great-grandfather and one of the first Black landowners in his community. Though Thomas hopes to give his children a homestead on which they could flourish, the land proves to be a burdensome inheritance. Over the years, it turns the Lambs against one another, culminating in a catastrophic tragedy that splinters the family and echoes through the decades.
Now, as the clock ticks on a potential sale of the farm, the ghosts fear expulsion from the home they’ve made, and Aubrey must weigh the hopes and burdens of her forebears with the very real needs of her future.
An expansive family saga told with a wry and distinctly modern voice, The Great Wherever is at once grand and intimate; it explores the ways we learn to define ourselves through and against our families, how we carry on after loss, and how the past lives on in all of us.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Shannon Sanders brings a modern sensibility to the venerable sweeping-family-saga tradition in this immersive, multigenerational novel. Aubrey Lamb is underemployed and financially struggling when she inherits a stake in the Tennessee farm that’s been in her family for generations. But being a co-owner is no simple matter. She has to share the property with a lot of strong-minded members of the Lamb family—not to mention the ghosts of those who came before. With the sauntering pace of a summer evening, Sanders lets the history of the farm unfold. That story auspiciously begins with Thomas Lamb, who buys the parcel from the very same family that once enslaved his own, the Lanyers. The weight of this aspect (and of Black land ownership in general) adds particularly meaningful color to the story, especially as the modern Lanyers are intent on buying the farm back. This is a gorgeous, haunting tale of Black ancestry and generational inheritance.
