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From an award-winning writer, a debut novel that's a fresh and dazzling portrait of a family and its history in the American South, from Reconstruction through the present day
At thirty-two, Aubrey Lamb is stumbling into adulthood. A semi-employed gig worker in Washington, DC, she's grieving the recent loss of her father and the end of a relationship that she'd thought would lead to marriage. When Aubrey learns that she has inherited a shared stake in a sizable Tennessee farm from her father, she simply sees an opportunity to get out of the city-and the potential to erase a mounting pile of debts.
Upon her arrival in Lanyer County, though, Aubrey meets the relatives with whom she shares ownership of the farm, and discovers the backstory of the land, beginning with her great-grandfather Thomas-one of the first Black landowners in his community, who gave his four children a homestead on which they could flourish.
But the land proves to be a burdensome inheritance. Over the years, it divides the family, turning Thomas' descendants against each other and drawing the attention of external forces only too eager to wrest the land from Black hands. These struggles come to a head when a catastrophic tragedy befalls the Lambs, splintering the family and echoing down through the decades, with repercussions for Audrey herself.
As Aubrey learns this history from her living relatives, the ghosts of her ancestors interject with their own exasperated, gossipy commentary on the flaws and foibles of relatives living and dead, and stake their own claims on the farm.
Injecting the expansive family sagas of Honorée Fanonne Jeffers and Margaret Wilkerson Sexton with a very modern voice, The Great Wherever is at once grand and intimate; it explores the ways we learn to define ourselves through and against our family, how we carry on after loss, and how the past lives on in all of us. Shannon Sanders is the author of the linked short story collection Company, which won the 2024 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes' Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, was named a Publishers Weekly and Debutiful Best Book of 2023, and was shortlisted for the 2024 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous publication s, including One Story, Sewanee Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Electric Literature, and received a PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. She lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, with her husband and three sons.
Praise for Company:
"A deftly woven tapestry that scrupulously depicts familial ties and estrangement, richly told with a nuance that allows each character dignity and grace."
―Jonathan Escoffery, The New York Times Book Review
"[Company] captures Black familial relations beyond the frame. . . . Sanders extracts comedy from the formidable situations that erupt in people's lives―divorce, financial struggle, aging, death and childlessness. Whether chosen or biological, who we consider family can shape how we cope with drama."
―The Washington Post
"Sanders' writing is what we need right now: stories of Black Americans living and questioning and existing as families in this complicated world. She doesn't focus on Black trauma...Instead, she writes about regular people living their regular, messy lives; her characters are both funny and relatable."
―Washington City Paper
"Company is a rich and distinct collection that announces Shannon Sanders as an exciting new voice in contemporary literature."
―BOMB
"[A] rare feat. . . . Sanders weaves the narrative fabric of her stories with the utmost care, creating an intricate and lively look into the many beautiful moments in the lives of one Black family."
―Chicago Review of Books' "Must-Read Books of October 2023"
"Sanders's flair for home life links her work to a tradition of 'domestic fiction,' a line traced from Alice Munro and
At thirty-two, Aubrey Lamb is stumbling into adulthood. A semi-employed gig worker in Washington, DC, she's grieving the recent loss of her father and the end of a relationship that she'd thought would lead to marriage. When Aubrey learns that she has inherited a shared stake in a sizable Tennessee farm from her father, she simply sees an opportunity to get out of the city-and the potential to erase a mounting pile of debts.
Upon her arrival in Lanyer County, though, Aubrey meets the relatives with whom she shares ownership of the farm, and discovers the backstory of the land, beginning with her great-grandfather Thomas-one of the first Black landowners in his community, who gave his four children a homestead on which they could flourish.
But the land proves to be a burdensome inheritance. Over the years, it divides the family, turning Thomas' descendants against each other and drawing the attention of external forces only too eager to wrest the land from Black hands. These struggles come to a head when a catastrophic tragedy befalls the Lambs, splintering the family and echoing down through the decades, with repercussions for Audrey herself.
As Aubrey learns this history from her living relatives, the ghosts of her ancestors interject with their own exasperated, gossipy commentary on the flaws and foibles of relatives living and dead, and stake their own claims on the farm.
Injecting the expansive family sagas of Honorée Fanonne Jeffers and Margaret Wilkerson Sexton with a very modern voice, The Great Wherever is at once grand and intimate; it explores the ways we learn to define ourselves through and against our family, how we carry on after loss, and how the past lives on in all of us. Shannon Sanders is the author of the linked short story collection Company, which won the 2024 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes' Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, was named a Publishers Weekly and Debutiful Best Book of 2023, and was shortlisted for the 2024 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous publication s, including One Story, Sewanee Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Electric Literature, and received a PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. She lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, with her husband and three sons.
Praise for Company:
"A deftly woven tapestry that scrupulously depicts familial ties and estrangement, richly told with a nuance that allows each character dignity and grace."
―Jonathan Escoffery, The New York Times Book Review
"[Company] captures Black familial relations beyond the frame. . . . Sanders extracts comedy from the formidable situations that erupt in people's lives―divorce, financial struggle, aging, death and childlessness. Whether chosen or biological, who we consider family can shape how we cope with drama."
―The Washington Post
"Sanders' writing is what we need right now: stories of Black Americans living and questioning and existing as families in this complicated world. She doesn't focus on Black trauma...Instead, she writes about regular people living their regular, messy lives; her characters are both funny and relatable."
―Washington City Paper
"Company is a rich and distinct collection that announces Shannon Sanders as an exciting new voice in contemporary literature."
―BOMB
"[A] rare feat. . . . Sanders weaves the narrative fabric of her stories with the utmost care, creating an intricate and lively look into the many beautiful moments in the lives of one Black family."
―Chicago Review of Books' "Must-Read Books of October 2023"
"Sanders's flair for home life links her work to a tradition of 'domestic fiction,' a line traced from Alice Munro and