When We Were Ghouls: A Memoir of Ghost Stories

When Amy E. Wallen's southern, blue-collar, peripatetic family was transferred from Ely, Nevada, to Lagos, Nigeria, she had just turned seven.

From Nevada to Nigeria and on to Peru, Bolivia, and Oklahoma, the family wandered the world, living in a state of constant upheaval. 'When We Were Ghouls' follows Wallen's recollections of her family who, like ghosts, came and went and slipped through her fingers, rendering her memories unclear.

Were they a family of grave robbers, as her memory of the pillaging of a pre-Incan grave site indicates?

Are they, as the author's mother posits, 'hideous people?' Or is Wallen's memory out of focus?

In this quick-paced and riveting narrative, Wallen exorcizes these haunted memories to clarify the nature of her family and, by extension, her own character.