From one of America’s most celebrated storytellers come three dark, interlocking tales about the residents of a rural New York town, and the shocking headlines that become their local mythologies.

A husband sells property to a mysterious, temperamental stranger, and is hounded on social media when he publicly questions the man’s character. A couple grow concerned when an enigmatic family move next door, and the children start sneaking over to beg for help. Two dangerous criminals kidnap an elderly couple and begin blackmailing their grandson, demanding that he pay back what he owes them.

Suspenseful, thrilling, and expertly crafted, American Spirits explores the hostile undercurrents of our communities and politics at large, as well as the ways local tragedies can be both devastating and, somehow, everyday. Ushering the reader through the town of Sam Dent, Russell Banks has etched yet another brilliant entry into the bedrock of American fiction.

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'The three long stories in AMERICAN SPIRITS, the latest and last book by Russell Banks, are set in these intimate chasms within our communities. . . This compulsion to revisit that which disgusts, disturbs, and depresses us feels regrettably central to our era. Banks understood this dark itch. In his work, even when houses are demolished and wilderness takes over old homesteads, tales about the families who built them and the families who abandoned them persist.'