HERE LIES OLIVE

A goth girl in New Mexico grapples with death—and what comes after it.

Death-obsessed Olive lives in a town known for dark tourism thanks to its history of a tuberculosis sanitarium that drew in Hollywood celebrities and other elites and which was built by the Seymour family on stolen Navajo land, compounding its morbid legacy. Olive has been terrified ever since her shellfish allergy caused a near-death experience: “instead of going to Heaven, I was alone in the Nothing.” She’s distanced herself from others, including her parents and best friend, Davis. Seeking answers about the afterlife, Olive decides to ask a ghost and summons Jay, who experienced atrocities at the sinister Seymour House Asylum for the Poor, a nightmarish institution “full of forgotten people.” Jay is at risk of becoming a shade, and Olive must help him find his grave so he can move on. In the process, she hopes to learn the answer to her enduring question, “where do you go after you die?” The book maintains levity through its pleasantly gothic energy, which will appeal to earnest believers in the paranormal and those in the throes of mortality-related existential crises alike. Davis is Diné; Olive, Jay, and the Seymours are white. This morbid tale that’s just as playful as it is unsettling explores race and cultural legacies in the context of New Mexico’s historical and contemporary politics of development.

A creative and surprising mixture of upbeat and macabre makes for an engaging read.