Ghost Town

Ghost Town

By Tom Perrotta

Pages

288

Rating

3.75

Year

2026

ParanormalGhostsHistorical FictionSocial IssuesComing-of-AgeFamily Life

Description

Jimmy Perrini lives in 1970s suburban New Jersey, a few miles from Manhattan, but a world apart. At the end of eighth grade, after tragedy strikes, Jimmy finds himself lost in a fog of grief that alienates him from friends and family, drifting instead into troubling friendships with two older teenagers: one a notorious local burnout with a fast car, an endless supply of weed, and a shaky grasp of reality; the other a smart, eccentric girl, whom Jimmy finds himself drawn to as they become entranced by her Ouija board, which may just offer the only salve to their grief.

As a fateful public drama unfolds, Jimmy is torn between the occult beyond and the cold realities of the place he has called home. Narrated by a much older Jimmy, a literary-turned-commercial novelist, Ghost Town reveals how the past haunts the present—the way our ghosts are always with us, even when we think we’ve left them behind.

A gripping and darkly nostalgic tale about a tumultuous summer in 1970s suburban New Jersey, from the perspective of a middle-aged writer looking back on a series of events that changed his life—and the story he finally has the courage to tell.

Endorsements

From New York Times bestselling author Tom Perrotta.

“The Steinbeck of Suburbia” — Time

“Our Balzac of the burbs” — Chicago Sun-Times

“An American Chekhov” — The New York Times