La Posada --- “place of rest” --- was once a grand Santa Fe mansion. It belonged to Abraham and Julia Staab, who emigrated from Germany in the mid-19th century. After they died, the house became a hotel. And in the 1970s, the hotel acquired a resident ghost --- a sad, dark-eyed woman in a long gown. Strange things began to happen there: vases moved, glasses flew, blankets were ripped from beds. Julia Staab died in 1896 --- but her ghost, they say, lives on.

In AMERICAN GHOST, Julia’s great-great-granddaughter, Hannah Nordhaus, traces her ancestor’s transfiguration from 19th-century Jewish bride to modern phantom. Family diaries, photographs and newspaper clippings take her on a riveting journey through 300 years of German history and the American immigrant experience. With the help of historians, genealogists, family members and ghost hunters, she weaves a masterful, moving story of fin-de-siècle Europe and pioneer life, villains and visionaries, medicine and spiritualism, imagination and truth, exploring how lives become legends and what those legends tell us about who we are.