NONFICTION | AVAILABLE SEPTEMBER 2026
THIS HAUNTED LAND: Reckoning with Ghosts and the Stories that Shape America
by BETSY GAINES QUAMMEN
“Gaines Quammen deftly guides us through the house of horrors that is America’s colonial past.”
—ANNETTE MCGIVNEY, Plastic Shaman
Why do humans need ghosts? And what do ghosts have to teach us?
In This Haunted Land, Betsy Gaines Quammen investigates some of America’s most enduring ghost stories and uncovers how ghost stories can help us come to terms with our unsettled past. With curiosity, a bit of skepticism, and an open-hearted willingness to learn from the living and the dead, Gaines Quammen takes readers on a riveting, sometimes spooky journey into the haunted towns, lands, waters, and parts of history that we too often ignore. From a once-booming uranium mine community now entombed in Colorado’s Mesa County, to America’s oldest fort on the east coast of Florida, This Haunted Land interweaves memory, mourning, folklore, and social anxiety—and shows that politicized efforts to rewrite history can be defeated by listening to the spectres of the past.
Hardcover Paper-over-board | ISBN: 9798890920478 | Nonfiction | Trim: 5.5 x 8.25” | 274 pp | $21.95 | September 1, 2026
“What leaves a reader with chills is not the fearsome details, but the deep well of empathy that motivates Gaines Quammen to advocate for the dead and her ability to look history straight in the eye.”
—LEAH SOTTILE, Blazing Eye Sees All
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
BETSY GAINES QUAMMEN is the author of American Zion and True West, which won the 2024 Reading the West Book Award. She examines the intersections of extremism, public lands, wildlife, and western communities, and her writing has appeared in The New York Times, New York Daily News, and History News Network. She received a PhD in history from Montana State University, a MS in environmental studies from University of Montana, and a BA in English from Colorado College. She lives in Bozeman, Montana, with her spouse, writer David Quammen.
ALSO BY THE AUTHOR
TRUE WEST: Myth and Mending on the Far Side of America
From the Northern Rockies to the Southwest deserts, Betsy Gaines Quammen explores how myths shape our identities, heighten polarizations, and fracture our shared understanding of the world around us. As she investigates the origins and effects of myths of the American West, Gaines Quammen travels through small towns and big cities, engaging people and building relationships at every stop.
Misperceptions about land, politics, liberty, and self-determination threaten the well-being of people and communities across the country, and Gaines Quammen interrogates it all as she seeks to reconcile the anger and misunderstandings that continue to be fueled by the West’s enduring myths and complex history. Whether sitting down with a local resident seeking to protect his rural Utah town from Antifa or talking with grassroots organizers working across ideological divides, Gaines Quammen brings to life connections and contradictions that shape our politics and our lives far beyond the West.
"True West disentangles reality from centuries of myth and mystique."
—HAMPTON SIDES, New York Times bestselling author of Blood and Thunder
AMERICAN ZION: Essays from Dry Places
What happens when members of an American religion—one built in the nineteenth century on personal prophecy and land proprietorship—assert possession over western federal lands, armed with guns and a certainty that God wants them to go to war? American Zion is the story of the ongoing feud between Mormon ranching family the Bundys, the federal government, and the American public. Historian Betsy Gaines Quammen examines the roots of the Bundys’ cowboy confrontations, and how history has shaped an often-dangerous mindset which today feeds the militia movement and threatens public lands, wild species, and American heritage.
“A fascinating primer on the twisted and nefarious legacy of theology, entitlement, conquest, and patriarchy in the American West.”
—FLORENCE WILLIAMS, author of The Nature Fix
PRAISE FOR THIS HAUNTED LAND
“An expert assessment of how America’s hauntings exist alongside its most harrowing histories. This Haunted Land shows how this country tells ghost stories and campfire tales to avoid confronting the terrors at the heart of our culture. What leaves a reader with chills is not the fearsome details, but the deep well of empathy that motivates Gaines Quammen to advocate for the dead and her ability to look history straight in the eye.”
—LEAH SOTTILE, Blazing Eye Sees All
“Gaines Quammen is a fabulous tour guide—smart, curious, open-minded and possessing more than a little of the ‘spunky charm’ she attributes to one of the haunted mining towns she visits. This Haunted Land is filled with not just spooky chills, but a profound message: ghosts remind us of the troubled past we work so hard to forget.”
—DAVID GESSNER, A Traveler’s Guide to the End of the World
“A compelling and fascinating way to examine US history! Having never given much stock to stories of haunting and ghost sightings, I now find myself eager to hear those stories and ask questions about the lands I live on and travel to, desperate to uncover what’s been hidden and honor what came before.”
—SALLY MERCEDES, Magic City Books
“You will gobble up this spooky folklore like handfuls of candy corn. Betsy Gaines Quammen deftly guides us through the house of horrors that is America’s colonial past. The true gift of this book is that it not only encourages America’s settler descendants to remember the dark truths about our nation’s history, but also enables us to reconcile with these hungry ghosts so that they no longer haunt the present.”
—ANNETTE MCGIVNEY, Pure Land and Plastic Shaman
“Gaines Quammen redefines spectral hauntings, reminding us that the things that go bump in the night might not always be malevolent beings, but unreconciled histories waiting for accountability and acknowledgement.”
—STACIE SHANNON DENETSOSIE, The Missing Morningstar
“This Haunted Land proves that our landscapes—from abandoned mines to stolen plains—hold the echoes of our greatest transgressions. No one can tell a ghost story, or a story about the soul of America, better than Gaines Quammen.”
—CMARIE FUHRMAN, Salmon Weather
“In Gaines Quammen’s characteristically captivating style, she once again takes us on an epic American adventure.”
—CHARLIE J. STEPHENS, A Wounded Deer Leaps Highest
“Jump in the truck with Gaines Quammen as she turns over the darkest corners of our nation. From a Colorado nuclear town that’s been buried alive to the silencing of Kettle Falls, a sacred salmon fishing site behind Grand Coulee Dam, this historian’s latest book is a riveting and haunting cross-country ride.”
—ANNA KING, Ghost Herd Podcast
“Through personal narrative and historic reflection, Gaines Quammen turns the term ‘haunted’ on its head, delving into the environmental impacts of extinction, the pursuit of radioactive material, the legacy of slavery, and how these horrible histories affect us as all.”
—ARVIN RAM, Townie Books
“This Haunted Land and its adventures along the road of America’s dark tourism industry remind us that ghost stories are a necessary corrective to our complicated and too-often-forgotten shared past.”
—KIRK ELLIS, writer/producer of HBO’s John Adams and Apple TV’s Franklin
“To make sense of this land’s historical trauma, Gaines Quammen meets every ghost with a willingness to sit and listen. The result is a breathtaking American ghost history that must be read to be believed.”
—XANDER DANENHAUER, The Country Bookshelf
