American Ghosts: A Memoir

Celebrated novelist David Plante grew up in an isolated, French-speaking community in Providence, Rhode Island, where nuns preserved the beliefs of le grand Canada amidst the profound presence of their deep, dark God. Caught between his silent, part-Blackfoot father and his vivacious but trapped mother, Plante flees this small world, losing his belief in any god and finding the center of his life in love and in writing. Still, the ghosts of his past haunt Plante and drive him to embark on a stunning spiritual and physical journey.

David Plante was born and brought up in a French-speaking Catholic parish in Providence, Rhode Island. The nuns wore black veils and taught the children that they lived in le petit Canada, where they preserved the beliefs of le grand Canada. His part-Blackfoot father was stoic and silent, his mother lively but trapped, and at the center of their difficult lives was a deep, dark God.

The ghosts of the parish haunted Plante long after he left home, lost his belief in any god, and found the center of his life both in love and in writing. Finally, Plante comes to terms with his dark God by coming to terms with his ancestry—a stunning spiritual and physical journey that brings him back to Providence, to Canada, to France, and finally to a new understanding of God.

“[A] self-scouring undertaken with resolute frankness and considerable stylistic grace.” —Sven Birkerts, New York Times Book Review

“Remarkable. And memorable.” —David M. Shribman, Globe and Mail (Canada)

“[Plante] offers a strange, mysterious, and deeply hopeful sense of spiritual possibility.” —Commonweal

“Emotionally disturbing and spiritually exhilarating.” —Sam Coale, Providence Journal

“This wonderful book takes on what may be the hardest questions by allowing this most observant individual to see and hear in miraculous detail. How, it asks, does any person become American, let alone find a place in the breathing cathedral that is this majestic universe?” —Jane Vandenburgh, Boston Globe

The New York Times - Sven Birkerts

American Ghosts is a memoir full of doubts and hesitations, a self-scouring undertaken with resolute frankness and considerable stylistic grace. The isolation and sorrow that permeate the opening pages are intense enough to saturate the rest of the book. Throughout, Plante shows that, despite the different path his life has taken, he is very much a product of his long-suffering family's ethos, confirming that origins can work on the spirit with a force as strong as gravity.

David Plante is the author of more than a dozen novels, including the Francoeur trilogy-The Family, The Woods, and The Country-as well as a work of nonfiction, Difficult Women: A Memoir of Three. His work has appeared in many periodicals, The New Yorker and The Paris Review among them, and has been nominated for a National Book Award. He teaches writing at Columbia University and lives in New York and London.