The Great Wherever

The novel is narrated from the afterlife by Le'Dar Valentine, a young Black woman who died at 27 in a car accident near Washington, DC. Le'Dar is one of four ghosts inhabiting what they call "the Great Wherever," centered on a family farm in Lanyer County, Tennessee. Each ghost died prematurely and was meant to inherit a share of the farm but never did. The dead can observe their living relatives by "perching on their shoulders," though they can rarely intervene. Le'Dar's fellow ghosts are Zena, Thomas Lamb's great-grandmother, whose spirit has haunted the farm's pond for generations; Peter, Le'Dar's great-uncle, drowned in the pond in 1958; and Fern, the daughter Elijah Lamb fathered outside his marriage, killed by a car at age nine.

The present-day story follows Aubrey Lamb, a 32-year-old Black woman living in DC. Aubrey goes to an upscale restaurant expecting a marriage proposal from her boyfriend of four years, Boyd Elledge, but Boyd breaks up with her instead. Humiliated, Aubrey calls her older sister, Bellamy, for a ride home. Bellamy inherited their late father Micah Lamb's suburban house and lives a settled domestic life. Over wine, she implies Aubrey's plan was to marry Boyd for his family's concealed wealth. The accusation devastates Aubrey, and the sisters stop speaking for weeks.

Micah left Bellamy the house and left Aubrey a one-third interest in 145 acres of family farmland in Lanyer County. Aubrey signed the inheritance papers without reading them and has never visited the property. She works as a Senior Document Technician at the law firm Ayers, Calloway & Kim (ACK), teaches SAT prep, and staffs a yoga studio. After the breakup, she spirals into nightly drinking and begins stalking Boyd's office building during lunch breaks.

One day at the yoga studio, Aubrey scrolls through months of neglected email and discovers messages from Hayward "Hays" Lamb, a cousin she has never met. Hays explains that Aubrey, along with himself, Samson Lamb, and Darlissa Massey, co-owns the farmland, and that a corporation called the Hightower Group has made a purchase offer. Intrigued, Aubrey books a flight to Memphis.

In Tennessee, Aubrey meets her cousins for the first time. Darlissa, a composed woman in her sixties, shares her hotel room when Aubrey's debit card is declined. Hays, a charismatic and openly gay pharmaceutical executive married to a man named Justin, drives them to the farm. There Aubrey meets Samson, a stocky IT worker who helps with upkeep, and sees the farmhouse: a modest single-story structure with a wraparound porch, built by her great-grandparents Thomas and Darla Lamb in 1933. The Hightower attorneys present a substantial offer at lunch, but Hays insists the meeting is informational only.

That evening, over dinner at the farmhouse, Hays begins telling Aubrey the multigenerational history of the land. The novel's middle sections weave between Aubrey's present-day visit and extensive historical narration. In the 1890s, a grandson of the Lanyer plantation owner sold cheaply built homes to freed Black workers, creating a community called Serviceberry. Thomas Lamb, a master cobbler descended from a leatherworker known only as "Somebody Lamb," saved enough to buy 157 acres of farmland in 1933 from Jack Delano, his boss's financially desperate cousin. During his inspection, Thomas encountered Zena's ghost by the pond and lost his shoemaker's awl in the mud, a delay that helped him negotiate a 30-percent discount. He built the house from a Sears, Roebuck mail-order kit.

Thomas and Darla raised four children. Elijah, the charismatic eldest, became a politician. Joah, called "Poke," struggled with resentment and eventually took work with the Lanyers. Lena, the only daughter, excelled academically at Spelman College. Peter, the youngest, had an innate gift for farming and conducted a secret relationship with a male coworker. Thomas wrote his will leaving the entire farm to Peter, the child most connected to the land.

In 1958, Luke Lanyer drowned Peter in the pond. Joah had arranged the encounter, and Lena suspected he did so knowing Luke's violent tendencies, but she could never prove it. The death was ruled accidental. Thomas, devastated, revised his will to divide the farm equally among his three surviving children. Darla sank into depression and died five years later; Thomas followed months afterward.

The siblings' relationship fractured over decades of disagreement. Joah pushed to sell to the Lanyers; Elijah and Lena refused. Shortly after Peter's death, the Lanyers quietly repositioned a boundary fence 12 acres deeper into Lamb territory. After 20 years of unchallenged use, they filed a successful adverse possession claim, a legal process by which someone who openly occupies another's land without objection can claim ownership. A final confrontation at the farmhouse turned physical between the brothers. Lena nearly accused Joah of complicity in Peter's death but held back. The three never gathered in the same room again. Each sibling's share eventually passed to the next generation, arriving at the four present-day cousins.

Le'Dar narrates her own story within this lineage. Conceived through in vitro fertilization funded by her grandmother Lena, she was raised under Lena's devoted care and became an academically brilliant young woman. During a visit to the farm after Lena's death, Le'Dar realized she was pregnant. Weeks later, driving home on an icy night, she was killed when another car struck hers and sent her into the Potomac River.

Back in the present, Aubrey sleeps with Trey, one of the Hightower attorneys, at the farmhouse. She receives a termination email from ACK for failing to respond to urgent communications during her unscheduled absence. Panicked about money, she contacts Trevor and Tolliver Lanyer, wealthy twin casino moguls buying back land their family once owned, and schedules a call to discuss selling her share.

In a key flashback, Aubrey reveals to Hays the full story behind her breakup: She became pregnant, and Boyd's mother Brigid pressured her to terminate the pregnancy. Aubrey went through with the procedure, experienced medical complications, exhausted her paid leave, and accepted a $1,400 loan from Brigid. Boyd ended the relationship months later.

The ghosts are alarmed by Aubrey's outreach to the Lanyers, knowing any foothold would allow the family to push the other owners out. Zena devises a plan: She places an old Sears, Roebuck pamphlet in the mud by the pond where Aubrey will find it. On her last morning in Tennessee, Aubrey discovers the pamphlet and its photograph of "The Aubrey," the house model her great-grandparents ordered, the very house she has been sleeping in. She realizes her father named her after it, a connection Micah never explained. While absorbed in this discovery, she misses three calls from Tolliver Lanyer and reaches only voicemail when she calls back.

Hays offers to buy Aubrey's share with savings he and Justin had set aside for a house down payment. Darlissa and Samson support the plan. Darlissa pledges to stay involved in Aubrey's life, cautioning that inheritance is not the only way to sustain family connection.

Aubrey accepts. Back in DC, she signs the transfer documents at a notary and uses Hays's payment to repay Brigid in full. The moment the deed is signed, Le'Dar's consciousness detaches from Aubrey's; with Aubrey's ownership stake gone, the supernatural bond that allowed Le'Dar to perch on her shoulder dissolves. Le'Dar closes the novel by recounting her own arrival in the Great Wherever: She appeared by the pond in her favorite dress, greeted by Zena, Peter, and Fern, the child ghost giggling with delight at having someone new to talk to.