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Curses and Other Buried Things

Audiobook (Includes supplementary content)
0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: About 2 weeks
0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: About 2 weeks

Blood holds all kinds of curses.

Seven generations of women in Susana Prather's family have been lost to the Georgia swamp behind her house. The morning after her eighteenth birthday, she awakens soaked with water, with no memory of sleepwalking. No matter how she tries to stop it, she's pulled from her safe bed night after night, haunted by her own family history and legacy. Now, the truth feels unavoidable: it's only a matter of time before she loses her mind and the swamp becomes her grave.

Unless she can figure out how to break the curse.

When she isn't sleepwalking, she's dreaming of her great-great-great-great-grandmother, Suzanna Yawn, who set the curse in motion in 1855. Her ancestor's life bears such similarity to her own that it might hold the key she seeks. Or it might only foretell tragedy.

As Susana seeks solutions in the past and the present, family members hold secrets tighter to their chests, friends grow distant, and old flames threaten to sputter and die. But Susana has something no one else has been able to seize: the unflagging belief that all curses can be broken and that love can help a new future begin.

Based on her own family history, award-winning novelist Caroline George's latest novel is a staggeringly beautiful work of hope.

  • Stand-alone young adult contemporary Southern gothic
  • Perfect for fans of Wilder Girls, Dark and Shallow Lies, and Swamplandia!
  • Book length: 97,000 words
  • Family trees are included in the audiobook companion PDF download.
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      • Publisher's Weekly

        August 21, 2023
        A teenager strives to break a generations-old curse in which the firstborn daughter always meets a tragic end in this propulsive story by George (The Summer We Forgot). Because of her family burden, Susana Prather—who grew up in south Georgia Okefenokee swamplands—knows she likely doesn’t have much time left to live. Like every Prather woman before her, she wakes on the morning of her 18th birthday covered in swamp water; it’s only a matter of time before she sleepwalks into the marsh and disappears. Susana is determined to be the one to break the curse, and as the enchantment continues to take hold, she delves into her family’s history and finds herself plagued by dreams of her ancestor Suzanna Yawn, the first woman affected by the blight. Complicating matters are personal issues with friends and old flames, as well as her grandparents’ tight-lipped refusal to divulge the family’s past. Alternating POVs of Susana in the present day and Suzanna from 1850 onward examine the parallels of each protagonist’s life and offer thoughtful, if occasionally overwrought, introspection. Sumptuous, dark details increase the creeping atmosphere of this judiciously rendered psychological exploration of blame, healing, and trauma. Suzanna is of Muscogee Indian Nation descent. Ages 13–up.

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    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

    Languages

    • English

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