num_pages: 304
description: With echoes of Toni Morrisons Beloved Yejids novel explores a forgotten quadrant of Washington DC and the ghosts that haunt it.Nephthys Kinwell is a taxi driver of sorts in Washington DC ferrying ill-fated passengers in a haunted car: a 1967 Plymouth Belvedere with a ghost in the trunk. Endless rides and alcohol help her manage her grief over the death of her twin brother Osiris who was murdered and dumped in the Anacostia River.Unknown to Nephthys when the novel opens in 1977 her estranged great-nephew ten-year-old Dash is finding himself drawn to the banks of that very same river. It is there that Dash--reeling from having witnessed an act of molestation at his school but still questioning what and who he saw--has charmed conversations with a mysterious figure he calls the River Man who somehow appears each time he goes there.When Dash arrives unexpectedly at Nephthys's door one day bearing a cryptic note about his unusual conversations with the River Man Nephthys must face both the family she abandoned and what frightens her most when she looks in the mirror.Creatures of Passage beautifully threads together the stories of Nephthys Dash and others both living and dead. Morowa Yejid's deeply captivating novel shows us an unseen Washington filled with otherworldly landscapes flawed super-humans and reluctant ghosts and brings together a community intent on saving one young boy in order to reclaim themselves.
language: English
title: Creatures of Passage
publisher: Akashic Books