Rooms for Ghosts

Terra Brigando's first novel, Rooms for Ghosts, chronicles the disintegration of a wealthy family while vacationing on an island one summer. The narrator, a young teenager, splits her time between caring for her drug-addicted mother and navigating her own desire for understanding. With no one to look after her, she finds herself enmeshed in her mother's lavish parties and becomes the object of affection of an older man. After discovering her father in an affair, she becomes obsessed with her father's mistress. What follows is a sweet, but unseemly relationship between the two females and a devastating tragedy that changes the family forever. Written in dark, lyrical prose, Rooms for Ghosts takes us on a journey that is rife with longing and confusion as the narrator searches for the love that seems to elude her.