Magical realism meets Southern Gothic in this commanding young adult debut from Ciera Burch about true love, the meaning of home, and the choices that haunt us.
Welcome to Coldwater. Come for the ghosts, stay for the drama.
Jericka Walker had planned to spend the summer before senior year soaking up the sun with her best friend on the Jersey Shore. Instead, she finds herself in Coldwater, Maryland, a small town with a dark and complicated past where her estranged grandmother lives, someone she knows only two things about: her name and the fact that she left Jericka's mother and uncle when they were children. But now Jericka's grandmother is dying, and her mother has dragged Jericka along to say goodbye.
As Jericka attempts to form a connection with a woman she's never known and adjusts to life in a town where everything closes before dinner, she meets "ghost girl" Kat, a girl eager to leave Coldwater and more exciting than a person has any right to be. But Coldwater has a few unsettling secrets of its own. The more you try to leave, the stronger the town's hold. As Jericka feels the chilling pull of her family's past, she begins to question everything she thought she knew about her mother, her childhood, and the lines between the living and the dead.
"Burch lovingly explores forgiveness and memory in this novel centering Black characters that has something"
from paranormal discovery to queer romance in a small town
"A double exposure of heartbreaking beauty and electric prose, Something Kindred tenderly beckons you to a town haunted by memories and asks you to stay awhile."
Jas Hammonds, award-winning author of We Deserve Monuments
"In an emotionally charged debut that's both bracing and sentimental, Burch composes an intimate generational portrait of a family of Black women who are tethered by their roots and grappling with the painful and permanent consequences of their efforts to break free from their histories."
