I’ve Missed You — And I Have Book News

Dear friends,

Sorry for my radio silence recently—I’ve been finishing my new book, This Haunted Land: Reckoning with Ghosts and the Stories that Shape America. Here is a quick summary from Torrey House Press: “In This Haunted Land, Betsy Gaines Quammen investigates some of America's most enduring ghost stories and uncovers how they can help us come to terms with our unsettled past. With curiosity and an open-hearted willingness to learn from the living and the dead, Gaines Quammen takes readers on a riveting, sometimes spooky journey into the haunted towns, lands, waters, and parts of history that we too often ignore. From a once-booming uranium mine community now entombed in Colorado’s Mesa County, to America’s oldest fort on the east coast of Florida, to the forests of Arkansas where the ivory-billed woodpecker once took flight, This Haunted Land interweaves memory, mourning, folklore, and social anxiety—and shows that politicized efforts to rewrite history can be defeated by listening to the spectres of the past.”

Here is what my friend CMarie sent to me after an early reading of the manuscript—I’m so enormously grateful to her and to the others who have helped me with advance readings:

“The truth about ghost stories is that they are rarely about the dead. They aren’t the bumps in the night or the apparitions we fail to catch in mirrors; they are the sheets being pulled off of who we, the living, truly are. In This Haunted Land, Betsy Gaines Quammen proves that our landscapes—from abandoned mines to stolen plains—hold the echoes of our greatest transgressions. No one can tell a ghost story, or a story about the soul of America, better than Quammen.”
—CMARIE FUHRMAN, Salmon Weather

I’m really excited about this book and hope you will be too. It will be out September 1, and if you're so inclined, you can preorder here. Woohoo!

With the manuscript safely in the hands of my capable editors, I’m currently sitting in my office and thinking of you all. It’s really quite lovely. I’m with my bookshelves, my dogs, and an old family rocking chair, cozy in an octagonal turret with windows looking out on our giant spruce tree. Its branches are currently convulsing in mad jerks, pinwheeling against a fierce wind. Spring squalls have been crazy in Montana—a few days ago the roof on a Great Falls elementary school was ripped clean off. At my feet, my youngest pup, Bunny, chuffs and sighs in her dreams as the gales push the walls and the house shudders. We are the eye of the storm.

My office has been my refuge in the last couple of weeks—a place of comfort amid a recent troll explosion that followed a podcast where I discussed North Idaho, white nationalism in America, and extremism in the West (topics I’ve written about for over a decade). When it went online, I was bombarded. The attacks were relentless: wishes for my death, white nationalist saber-rattling, and bizarre accusations around pedophilia. Comments condemned me for being an older woman, for being educated, and for being progressive. I know I’m certainly not the only one who has faced online vitriol, and my heart goes out to those who have gone through it. It’s an assaultive and anxiety-inducing experience. Sadly, the epidsode became another affirmation that hatred has become so ordinary in our lives—many of the comments openly espoused vicious misogyny, stunning racism, vulgar white power talking points, and violence. This dark culture has been around for a while, as I well know, but their posts and their presence have become ever more unrestricted, unhinged, and ungated as Elon Musk set a deranged standard on X. And Mark Zuckerberg followed in his footsteps. These digital platforms are not safe, nor are they impartial—and they’re even more treacherous for LGBTQ+ and People of Color. We need to continue to share experiences about this harassment and call out those profiting from social cesspools. 

So onward as we speak truth, advocate, sing for lands, and vulnerable people. I’m sitting here with the Montana wind, thinking about my next project, trying to stay sane, and looking for things in this world that are bright lights amid war, the Epstein cover-up, bids for land grabs, attempts at historical erasure, and ICE’s brutality. I’ve found some things to cheer me up—a nesting pair of California Condors in the redwoods; the rediscovery of the mountain pygmy possum and the ring-tailed glider, mammals thought to be extinct for 6,000 years; and the doubling of nightjar populations in the last five years! There is hope in nature, in its drive to evolve, sustain, pulse, and press on. There is also hope in human joy, resolve, and ability to imagine better days. 

So, take care, all. I promise to correspond more now that my book has been turned in. The tour begins in the fall, so I’d love to see many of you in person. I’ll share my schedule once it’s firmed up. In the meantime, hang in there. We are in this together, along with condors, nightjars, and ring-tailed gliders.

With love,

Betsy