Elle Magazine’s March Issue includes a lovely review of American Ghost. “It’s ironic,” writes Elyse Moody, “that the Santa Fe, New Mexico, hotel occupying journalist and historian Hannah Nordhaus’ ancestral home is named La Posada, or place of rest, since no one who stays there seems to get any.”
In her colorful and engrossing quest,” the review continues, “Nordhaus consults psychics and ghost hunters,” along with distant relatives and family diaries, pursues “fascinating tangents” from Nazi “holiday camps” to 19th-century gynecology, and asks “questions mere enthusiasts might not: Do tales like Julia’s ferret out truths or bend them to fit contemporary molds?”
“Such introspection,” Moody concludes, “deepens her genealogical quest into a satisfying philosophical one as well.”