Something Kindred

Magical realism meets Southern Gothic in this commanding YA debut featuring a love triangle, bisexuality, ghosts, and intergenerational trauma within an African American family.

Jericka Walker had planned to spend the summer before senior year soaking up the sun with her best friend on the Jersey Shore. Instead she finds herself in Coldwater, Maryland, a small town where her estranged and dying grandmother lives—a grandmother she knows only two things about: her name and the fact that she left Jericka’s mother and uncle when they were children.

Soon Jericka meets "ghost girl" Kat, who is eager to leave Coldwater and more intriguing than a person has any right to be. But Coldwater has a few secrets of its own. The more you try to leave, the stronger the town’s hold. As Jericka feels the chilling pull of her family’s past, she begins to question everything she thought she knew about her mother, her childhood, and the lines between the living and the dead.

Ciera Burch is a lifelong writer and ice cream aficionado. She has a B.A from American University and an MFA from Emerson College. Her fiction has appeared in American Literary Magazine, Underground, the art and literary journal of Georgia State University, Stork, and Blackbird. While she is originally from New Jersey, she currently resides in Washington, D.C. with her stuffed animals and far too many books.

"A double exposure of heartbreaking beauty and electric prose, Something Kindred tenderly beckons you to a town haunted by memories and asks you to stay awhile."—Jas Hammonds, award-winning author of We Deserve Monuments