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What Jonah Knew

A Novel

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

"A spellbinding literary thriller packed with psychological suspense and profound questions about motherhood, trauma and how death illuminates life."—Amy Tan, bestselling author of The Joy Luck Club and Where the Past Begins

"Barbara Graham is a literary alchemist. What Jonah Knew not only grabs you from the first page, it makes the mystical believable and the human predicament shine with wit, wisdom, and love."—Tara Brach, meditation teacher and bestselling author of Radical Acceptance and Radical Compassion

A seven-year-old boy inexplicably recalls the memories of a missing 22-year-old musician in this psychological thriller about the fierce love between mothers and sons across lifetimes, a work of gripping suspense with a supernatural twist that will mesmerize fans of Chloe Benjamin and Lisa Jewell.

Helen Bird will stop at nothing to find Henry, her musician son who has mysteriously disappeared in upstate New York. Though the cops believe Henry's absence is voluntary, Helen knows better.

While she searches for him—joined finally by police—Jonah is born to Lucie and Matt Pressman of Manhattan. Lucie does all she can to be the kind of loving, attentive mother she never had, but can't stop Jonah's night terrors or his obsession with the imaginary "other mom and dog" he insists are real.

Whether Jonah's anxiety is caused by nature or nurture—or something else entirely—is the propulsive mystery at the heart of the novel.

All hell breaks loose when the Pressmans rent a summer cottage in Aurora Falls, where Helen lives. How does Jonah, at seven, know so much about Henry, Helen's still-missing son? Is it just a bizarre coincidence? An expression of Jung's collective unconscious? Or could Jonah be the reincarnation of Henry?

Faced with more questions than answers, Helen and Lucie set out to make sense of the insensible, a heart-stopping quest that forces them to redefine not just what it is to be a mother or a human being, but the very nature of life—and death—because of what Jonah knows.

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      May 30, 2022
      The disappearance of 22-year-old Henry Bird, a fiddler in a bluegrass band, drives Graham’s intriguing if flawed debut. When Henry doesn’t return to his mother Helen’s home in Aurora Falls, N.Y., after a performance, the local police are hesitant to get involved, as Henry is an adult and there’s no evidence of foul play. However, Helen is certain that he wouldn’t have abandoned his pregnant girlfriend. Seven years later, with the case still unresolved, Lucie and Matt Pressman and their seven-year-old son, Jonah, return to Aurora Falls, where the couple had been vacationing when the child was born. Jonah has always said that he lived before and had another mother. Could that other mother be Helen, whose life is once again thrown into chaos? Any pretense of investigating Henry’s disappearance is lost amid details of Lucie’s extensive research into reincarnation, which includes plenty about Buddhism, enlightenment, and the soul. In the end, Henry’s memories, as communicated through Jonah, shed light on the musician’s fate. Graham’s ability to convincingly convey her characters’ emotions makes up only in part for the lack of suspense. Those expecting a conventional mystery may feel cheated.

    • Booklist

      June 1, 2022
      In Graham's genre-bending fiction debut, two women's lives become intertwined in a heartrending story about grief, trauma, and the love between mothers and sons. When Helen Bird's 22-year-old son, Henry, goes missing, she spends the next eight years searching for him, while her own life grows stagnant. At the same time, Lucie Pressman's seven-year-old son, Jonah, starts recalling memories of Henry, leading to night terrors and visits to a psychologist. Graham excels at depicting the emotions of the mothers: Helen's grief is palpable, and Lucie's concern for Jonah feels authentic, transporting the reader into the minds of the women. A chance meeting between Jonah and Helen, his "other" mom, rattles everyone, especially when they realize that Jonah may know what happened to Henry. There aren't many thrills in this thriller until the very end, and the pace drags a bit in the middle, but those willing to invest in the spiritual and psychological lessons along the way will find the emotional payoff well worth the effort. For mystery fans who like to ponder the larger issues.

      COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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  • English

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