If the Dead Belong Here: A Novel

· Penguin Random House Audio · Narrated by Charley Flyte, Amy Hall, Shaun Taylor-Corbett, Erin Tripp, and Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers
Audiobook
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This book will become available on October 7, 2025. You will not be charged until it is released.

About this audiobook

When a young girl goes missing, the ghosts of the past collide with her family’s secrets in a mesmerizing Native American Southern Gothic

When six-year-old Laurel Taylor vanishes without a trace, her family is left shattered, struggling to navigate the darkness of grief and unanswered questions. As their search turns to despair, Laurel’s older sister, Nadine, begins experiencing nightmares that blur the line between dream and reality, and she becomes convinced that Laurel’s disappearance could be connected to other family tragedies. Guided by her elders, Nadine sets out to uncover whether laying the ghosts to rest is the key to finding her sister and healing her fractured family.

Carson Faust captivates in this chilling literary debut that confronts the specter of colonization and the generational scars it leaves on Native American families. Steeped in Indigenous folklore and drawing from the author’s own family history, If the Dead Belong Here examines what it means to be haunted—both by the supernatural and by terrors of our own making. Faust crafts a powerful, kaleidoscopic tale about the complicated legacies of violence that shape our present, the importance of honoring our past, and the resilience of a family—and a people—determined to heal from old wounds.


* This audiobook edition includes a downloadable PDF featuring a family tree from the book.

About the author

Carson Faust is two-spirit and an enrolled member of the Edisto Natchez-Kusso Tribe of South Carolina. He is the recipient of fellowships from the McKnight Foundation and the Jerome Foundation. His fiction has appeared in Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology. He lives in Minnesota.

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