American Ghost: A Familys Haunted Past in the Desert Southwest by Hannah Nordhaus

American Ghost: A Familys Haunted Past in the Desert Southwest Reviews

• 
  Diane S ☔

  3.5 Although I expected this to be more of a ghost story, which many different, psychics, dowsers, and other paranormal professionals do give their opinions, I found so much more. The story of a Jewish family, settling Santa Fe, in its earliest days. So much history, politics, the railroad and the family with Julia as its matriarch and Abraham as the paternal head. From the beginning Julia missed Germany where her family was very prominent and she never truly embraced her new home. They had many children and it was interesting reading about they family, many whom suffered from depression and other forms of mental illnesses.
  
  Julia many times went to sanitariums and made many trips back home to Germany, in hopes of a cure for her lingering depression. Many times her daughters would accompany her. Abraham became very successful, building a huge house and hiring help for Julia, even bringing cousins over from Germany as a companion for her, but nothing seemed to have a lasting effect.
  
  Of course the archbishop Cather fame is mentioned as is his relationship with both Julia and Abraham and the church he built. Found this book quite fascinating and loved how the author went about uncovering and discovering the pieces of her family. So not exactly a ghost story, though it is said that Julia's ghost does roam throughout the hotel, which used to be her house. Well who knows, stranger things have happened.
  
  ARC from publisher.
• 
  Ariel

  I was so excited to read this book because the premise was so intriguing. The author has an ancestor that was supposedly haunting a hotel room in Santa Fe, New Mexico and she set out to learn as much as she could about her relative, Julia Schuster Staab. The haunting was so famous that it was even featured as an episode on Unsolved Mysteries. After reading this book it turns out I could have just watched that episode and probably been satisfied.
  
  The author really had to reach to get enough to fill an entire book. Part of the problem was that it was nearly impossible to obtain information about Julia directly. Most of what she was able to learn (and it wasn't much) came from a diary that she found from a family member that was kept by Julia's daughter. The facts that could be concretely proven about Julia only filled a few pages. According to legend the haunting was supposedly due to Julia's mental illness after the death of her baby. Whether Julia was tormented by such an occurrence could never be proven although she did seem to suffer from a malady later in life.
  
  The bulk of the book was genealogy about the author's family tree that would have been of interest only to direct descendants. Although the family lineage was a bore I do love learning about history and the descriptions of the American West at the time of Julias's life were of interest to me. Making up the rest of the book were some of the author's side excursions. Some I enjoyed like her trip to the ghost tour of The Stanley (the hotel made famous by author Stephen King in The Shining) and some I didn't enjoy like her page and a half rambling about trying pot in order to connect with Julia. I think the author had enough information for a really great article. There just wasn't enough to the story to keep my interest through an entire book.
• 
  Jo Ann

  I've decided to abandon this one at 28%. I was hoping for a good ghost story and it's not happening. This appears to be more a genealogy about a Jewish family who immigrated from Germany to Santa Fe, New Mexico then about a haunting. The author has repeated several times that she knows very little about her Great grandmother Julia Staab, so quite bit of her story so far is speculation. She seems to want to give endless descriptions of New Mexico in the 1800's and lots of Jewish history before the war. She keeps introducing more people that seem inconsequential to the story. She just had to throw in that bit about Billy the Kid. I also felt a little put off by the fact that as a serious journalist Nordhaus admits to paying a psychic to help in her research. Anyhow that's enough for me.
  
• 
  Julie G

  This non-fiction pursuit of Ms. Nordhaus's is well-organized and professionally written. However, I struggled terribly with the title. . . this isn't really about an American Ghost, and it falls short of being a substantial or tantalizing ghost story. This boils down to one woman's genealogical research of a more illustrious family than most, but I still struggled with the feeling that there just wasn't enough meat on this bone.
  
  The author makes some lovely observations at the story's end, and I wanted to share a few exceptional lines:
  
  "Our children always grow to live in a foreign country, removed not necessarily by ships across the sea but by era and disposition."
  
  "In Jewish tradition, it is said that we die twice. Once when we take our last breath, and again the last time somebody speaks our name."
  
  
• 
  Mark Stevens

  “Now I know what a ghost is. Unfinished business, that’s what.”
  
  That’s a Salman Rushdie line (from "The Satanic Verses") but it’s a perfect description of what Hannah Norhaus sets out to do with American Ghost—chase down some unfinished business.
  
  In this case, the ghost is from her own past—a great-great-grandmother whose life and death deserved, well, fleshing-out.
  
  The woman was Julia Schuster Staab. Her life began in Germany. It ended half way around the world, as the lonely and disheartened wife of a Jewish dry goods merchant, in New Mexico.
  
  Julia Schuster Staab’s life (1844-1896) forms the heart of "American Ghost." So does Julia’s ghost—a ghost first seen by a janitor at La Posada (“place of rest,” not hardly) in the 1970s. Other odd occurrences, straight out of heebie jeebie land, soon followed.
  
  Even without the added wrinkle of the (possibly) paranormal mixed in, the story of Julia Schuster Staab would have been ample on its own for a fascinating account of Santa Fe and settling the Southwestern frontier in the second half of the 19th Century. Julia’s husband Abraham amassed the largest fortune in Santa Fe and was an active civic leader so we see Santa Fe take root out on the western fringes of the “prairie ocean.” Some of the tales here about the multi-cultural aspects of Santa Fe’s early days, particularly that a Jew played a role in helping Archbishop Jean-Baptiste Lamy (yes, the Death Comes to the Archbishop guy) with his cathedral construction, are fascinating. The ghost question—and our collective beliefs about the spirits and apparitions—add another layer of intrigue to this brilliant book.
  
  Nordhaus, in fact, had a longtime fixation with the ghost in her family’s past. “I gravitated to her story simply because it was such a good one,” she writes. “A child who loved stories, I could now claim my own piece of the past: a mail-order German bride dragged west, married badly, driven insane and trapped forever as a ghost in her unhappy ending.”
  
  After college, in fact, Nordhaus moved to Santa Fe and read extensively about the lives of women on the frontier. She later wrote her first published article about Julia. It was “heavy on self-dramatization and feminist surmise,” she notes in one of many self-deprecating lines. At the time, she was certain that Julia was a victim “and that this victimhood lay behind her ghost.” Nordhaus concedes that Julia “was the specter of my twentysomething angst.”
  
  Twenty years later, she came across a document that reignited her interest in the story—and would perhaps give her a chance to recalibrate her opinions of Julia’s life. The document, a family history written by a great aunt, Lizzie, in 1980, “was a tale of a family ecosystem deeply out of balance—forbidden love, inheritance and disinheritance, anger and madness. There were drug addictions, lawsuits, brother against brother, madhouses, penury and suicides. There were fatal wounds to the ‘bosom.’ There were Julia’s children; their story branched from hers. And it was clear to me, from Lizzie’s book, that the family was haunted well before Julia became a ghost. I wondered what had gone so wrong.”
  
  Unfinished business.
  
  Nordhaus traces threads wherever she can find them and what unfolds is a fascinating portrait of a stranger in a strange, barren land. "American Ghost" follows the history of Julia’s life, including her roots in Germany and life in the booming outpost of Santa Fe. The threads lead her back to Europe (how “American”) and Nordhaus’ research and digging in Germany are as colorful and as haunting as anything else in this account. Interspersed with the historical detail are Nordhaus’ takes on modern-day efforts to detect or stay in touch with the spirit world—ghost hunters, psychics, and drugs (medical marijuana). Her account of a ghost tour at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park is hilarious.
  
  Nordhaus also spends a night in what was Julia’s room and, even if her scientific, fact-based approach to reporting, recounts a chilling moment but offers no conclusion. “Ghosts are not innocent until proven guilty,” writes Nordhaus. “They are always guilty: present until proven absent. Absence of evidence, as they so often say in the world of the paranormal, is not evidence of absence. We so badly want the dead to stay with us.”
  
  As she notes, ghost hunting and ancestor hunting are kin. “They both involve sifting through heaps of supposition, extrapolation, and unmoored clues interspersed with brief, infinitesimal wisps of evidence.”
  
  The wisps come together. As both a human being and as a lingering spirit, Julia left a powerful story that comes into sharp focus in "American Ghost." In the hands of Hannah Nordhaus, the resulting narrative is indelible.
  
  For a Q & A with Hannah Nordhaus, visit
  http://wp.me/plqD1-AZ.
• 
  Julie

  American Ghost: A Family's Haunted Past in the Desert Southwest by Hannah Nordhaus is a 2015 Harper publication. I was provided a copy of this book by the publisher and Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.
  
  With a title like this one, I was sure this book would make an excellent Halloween read. I'm not a slasher, blood and gore type horror fan, but instead lean toward the creepy, chiller ghost and haunted house stories. So, I was all set to immerse myself in a little history, a little haunting, and maybe a few thrills and spine tingling moments to cap it off.
  
  Sadly, this book was, well, to be totally honest, boring. The history provided about Julia would definitely be interesting to one's own family, but to anyone else, it was very dry reading.
  
  The ghost story is apparently one of note and concerns the author's great, great, grandmother Julia Schuster Staab, who allegedly haunts a hotel in Sante Fe. Through the years, those who spent the night in Julia's room have complained of various unexplained temperature drops, orbs of dancing lights and other very unsettling occurrences. The story grew to epic proportions and of course embellishments went without saying.
  
  So, the author began a quest to learn of Julia's past, her heritage, her marriage to a man many believe treated her cruelly, her supposed descent into madness, and her death. Determined to separate fact from fiction, the author employed mediums, did intense historical research, and was often surprised by her findings.
  
  I think the title will throw some people off, and although I did read the synopsis, as a person who also enjoys history, I felt I had a good understanding of what to expect from the book. It was an interesting journey in many aspects, but it was such a personal quest, that I often failed to connect to the author's enthusiasm, frustrations, and at times her methods.
  I will confess, I did think of abandoning this one by the half way mark, but couldn't let it go without knowing what the final verdict would be. I was pleased by the way the book ended, which will give the reader a sense of peace and closure.
  
  This story is also a kind of cautionary tale, in which we are reminded how myths can grow to outlandishness, leaving only a particle of truth behind. The myth and legend of this haunting will be impossible to extinguish now that it's been embedded in the minds of the public, who prefer to fiction most of the time in order to capitalize on the public's curiosity. Still, for the author, I felt that in the end, she at least derived a sense of accomplishment from her research and it was worth her while in the end.
  
  2.5 stars
• 
  Jeanette

  After some thought, I'm being generous to go to a 4 star evaluation. It was a full 4 star for me up until about the 2/3rds point when she tended to leave the story of Julia Staab behind in some great portions. And that was the base issue if I would have reduced it to a 3.
  
  This is not a "Ghost" story as some seem to surmise, especially the trailer, as much as an author's memoir of her Sante Fe genealogy search. In whole it is far more a thorough multi branch and generational genealogy coupled with a history of 1865-1920 era Sante Fe, New Mexico as much as it is a "ghost" story.
  
  Both history and memoir aspects I absolutely enjoyed. It was 4 star in enjoyment. The broad asides and fill ins for the psychic and clairvoyant avenues both in definition and in assistants that the author sought- those filled up the gaps between the other two elements. It lost an entire star in organization and with those asides, but that didn't dent the connection for me within Julia's prime possible "sorrow". Her large aside to Julia's birth family's outcome in 1940's Germany added much to this tale- because they, those cousins and siblings of the original town "branches"- they had all traveled and moved during the intervening century.
  
  Her Great-great Grandmother's life was completely worth the survey this author commenced! No spoilers, but in discovering Abraham's and Julia's dithers and essentially surmising the condition of their marriage and relationships? Fascinating. I really like the very end conclusions, as well. I appreciated her reveals to all 7 of the Staab offspring's health and life histories too. And the photos and lithograph prints of people and places in this copy were outstanding.
  
  This book would be a fabulous read before visiting modern day Sante Fe, New Mexico, IMHO.
• 
  Lauren

  First, to comply with the "Terms & Conditions", I hereby disclose in this, my review, that I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads. This was my first work of non-fiction received in this manner.
  
  I must say that, unfortunately, I was less than thrilled. I found it put together quite haphazardly, at times, with chapters that had very little to do with Julia Staab. Almost half way through, we'd learned what felt like next to nothing about the ghost or her story. Instead, the author felt it necessary to detail her adventures with ghost hunters, psychics and all other manner of the less than typical research methods she used. I understand that information from that time period can be scarce, as she noted several times that it was for the family members in question, but the repetition of information and seemingly endless tangents left the overall story Nordhaus was trying to tell feeling fractured. I would guess that the book could have been about half of its current size, were this information left out, particularily the information on her relatives affected by the Holocaust. Though a direct relative of Julia, it had nothing to do with her as it happened well after she was dead. Again, I feel as though it detracted from the overall point of the book.
  
  Additionally, the author would frequently double back, creating an unclear timeline on occasion. For this reason, I wouldn't even feel comfortable using this for reference material, although the Bibliography included in the waning pages is extensive and may hold some gems, from a research perspective, that may prove useful to the right audience.
  
  Overall, I would NOT recommend this to anyone who isn't a relative of Ms. Nordhaus.
• 
  Lisa

  Even though this is about the author learning about her relative, Julia, who supposedly haunts her family's old house in Santa Fe, it's really about German Jews immigrating to New Mexico in the 1800s - or one family in particular. I lost interest when she spent time on other relatives, finding it hard to keep track and not caring as much, since I'm not a family member. Her spiritual attempts to reach Julia were fascinating; I wanted more of that. An epilogue would be useful; does Julia still haunt La Posada after being set free?
• 
  Valerie Anne

  Intriguing historical narrative interwoven with paranormal elements. An intimate portrait of Julia Staab--the author's ancestor and, according to legend, the ghost who haunts a hotel in Santa Fe. Also a fine exploration of Santa Fe, immigration, the Wild West, mental illness, and being a woman in the Victorian era.
• 
  Sarah Beth

  I received an uncorrected proof copy of this book from HarperCollins.
  
  Part memoir, part family history, part ghost story, this work of non-fiction follows the author's investigation into her great-great-grandmother, Julia Staab, who is said to haunt a hotel in Santa Fe. Apparently the ghost is quite infamous, as TV shows, spiritualists, and novelists have flocked to the story. Julia and her husband Arthur became the subject of many books and articles after the appearance of her ghost in the 1970s. The family had always seen Arthur and his wife as pioneers and a first family of Santa Fe. The published stories made them sound less upstanding and depicted Arthur as "an altogether less appealing character. Now, he kept mistresses and engaged in shadowy business transactions. He frequented gambling halls and bordellos. He was ruthless" (5). Intrigued by the public's attempts to explain away Julia's haunting, Nordhaus sets out to find out the truth behind Julia's life.
  
  Julia is the author's "paternal grandfather's maternal grandmother" (3). She was born in 1844 in Germany and died in 1896. She was brought to America by her husband, a rising businessman in Santa Fe, who travelled back to Germany to find a Jewish bride. She had seven children who lived to adulthood, and one who died as a baby. Frustratingly, it's hard to know much about Julia's private life. "She was a nineteenth-century woman, after all - sequestered in the home, invisible then as now. I knew of no love letters, no missives to the old country, no diaries written in her hand, no admiring biographies" (10). About as close to Julia as we can get is the diary her daughter Bertha kept from 1891 to 1893. Yet despite alluding to her mother's illnesses and a grave "accident" that befell her mother, even Bertha is veiled about her family secrets. Much has been lost to time. In all likelihood, were it not for her supposed ghost, no one would remember Julia at all.
  
  It seems likely that Julia suffered from depression or some sort of nervous condition. We know that she underwent some sort of gynecological surgery - however whether that was for physical or mental treatment, we can't be sure. She had a slow decline over five years before dying in her home - the mansion her husband built her that would eventually become the hotel said to be haunted by her. Yet no one knows exactly how she died. Several of her descendant would also suffer from depression and commit suicide - perhaps Julia took her own life? Perhaps it was an accident? A legitimate illness that led to her premature death?
  
  Julia's story is told in generally chronological order, but interspersed with asides about Nordhaus' search into her family history and encounters with various mediums and psychics. I was a little skeptical about the author's search for the actual spirit of Julia at first, but I was assured to find that the author is skeptical herself - "The just-the-facts journalist in me thought of the whole ghost-hunting endeavor as a joke - a punch line to my more meaningful historical search " (75).
  
  I think the title and summary of this book is a bit misleading in that the book is about Julia - but it's really about Nordhaus' whole family tree. The author spends a significant amount of time on other branches of Julia's tree, including the history and fate of Julia's much younger sister who died at the hands of the Nazis during World War II. This search sparks a long discussion of what it meant for the family to be Jewish. The author also spends a good bit of time discussing the fates of Julia's offspring and family feuds that erupted long after Julia's death.
  
  Although I loved reading about Julia's history, and about her specific haunting, I was not as enthused about the author's delving into the history of ghost hunters and psychics. In particular, the author spends significant time giving a history of the Victorian Spiritualist movement and performers such as Annie Abbott, who performed for audiences with claims that they could sense the other world. Since Julia's ghost didn't appear until the 1970s, this was less relevant to her particular story. The only reason the author includes the many pages about Annie Abbott is because Bertha's diary reveal that Bertha saw Annie Abbott perform. However, attendance at such events was typical of the time and not indicative of the family's strong adherence to Spiritualism or impact on Julia after her death. In short, this lengthy detour in the story didn't seem to contribute much to the understanding of Julia's particular story.
  
  Whether or not Julia's ghost do in fact haunt the hotel where she lived in life, her ghost story prompted the author to explore the woman and the life behind the myth. Although there's much that we'll never know about Julia's life, the author's search has exposed what can be known, and laid to rest some of the rumors surrounding her famous ancestor.
• 
  Brina

  I give this book 3.5 stars only because the title was a little misleading to me. American Ghost is a book that centers around the author's great-great grandmother Julia Staab who is a ghost who haunts La Posada hotel, which used to be her Santa Fe, New Mexico home. In part, the book is the author's quest to find out if the rumors about Julia's ghost are true. That is only about one half of the book, hence the slightly misleading title.
  Interspersed with the ghost hunt is a family history from Julia and her husband Abraham on down to the author. I was more interested about the genealogical and historical aspects of the book than the ghost hunt. Most books about early 20th century Jewish immigrants are centered in 1910s-20s New York, so to read a book taking place on the other side of the country was refreshing. I found it fascinating that the wealthiest man in New Mexico 100 years ago was not a Hispanic or Indian but a Jewish merchant of dry goods. And that Santa Fe was for the most part until the advent of electricity a wild western town of saloons, gun fights, and loosely regulated laws.
  Such was the world that Julia found when she came to America from Germany as Abraham's new wife. Having been wealthy and surrounded by family in Lugde, Germany, Julia arrives in Santa Fe not knowing anyone, not being able to speak English or Spanish, and initially living in an adobe brick home. At first she was most likely home sick and with each pregnancy it appeared to me that she must have suffered from postpartum depression. The pregnancies and also miscarriages took a toll on her body and she eventually withdrew herself from life. Abraham, while attempting to cure his wife based on the medical thinking of the era, kept on living. This seems to have withdrawn Julia even further.
  What is also interesting to me were the Victorian views on women and how people had to "fit inside the box" of social, mental, and physical standards or they were viewed as unfit and perhaps even insane. Julia fits these views- a withdrawn woman spending life in her room, depressed. When she passed away, the legend surrounding her life and death continued to grow to the point that she became a ghost haunting the hotel that used to be her home.
  Is she a ghost? Modern evidence and psychics seem to believe so. Anyone else will have to read and draw their own conclusions about that.
  American Ghost was put together chronologically and did not jump around much. It is noted in the acknowledgements that the author used a fiction editor to help with the storylines. Hence the story could read like fiction. I would recommend the book to people interested in 1890s American southwestern and/or Jewish history. I would not recommend it as a ghost book. An entertaining read nonetheless.
• 
  Lorraine

  This title caught my eye. Hannah Nordhaus’ American Ghost: A Family’s Haunted Past in the Southwest centers on the author’s great-great-grandmother who was brought to Santa Fe, NM as a German bride of Abraham Staab, a German of the Jewish faith, who had opened a dry goods store in Santa Fe in 1859. Julia Schuster, this German bride who was also Jewish, left her home in Germany and came to Santa Fe in the 1860s when Indian wars were happening, to live in a small adobe (mud) house in Santa Fe which was part of the untamed Wild West - a shocking change for a Victorian woman coming from a European well-to-do merchant family. The author, a journalist and historian, developed an interest in Julia as she heard the ghost stories about her. Julia was supposedly haunting the family home in Santa Fe. The author wishes to discover the truth, but as she researches Julia, she uncovers quite a bit more about her ancestors. The author’s writing style is comfortable to read, and much of the history of Santa Fe is fascinating. And I was amazed at the travel The Staab Family did-traveling back to Germany often, off to California and New York. Please remember that this takes place in the latter half of the 19th C. My main difficulty with this book is when the author deviates away from the main subject. For example, when doing research in Germany, the author writes at length about a concentration camp where Julia’s sister died at age 80, and then states how many Jewish people died there (a horrific number). The author included some Nazi practices as well. I appreciated the knowledge, but I wished she would return to Julia and her family. I learned much about ‘settling’ NM in addition to living at that time period in NM. I feel that it would have been extremely difficult and lonely being an ‘Anglo’-not Native American or Hispanic in Santa Fe. I truly did admire the author’s attitude in relation to locating info in unconventional ways. 3.25 stars.
• 
  Joyce Vorbach

  Really moving memoir of a very interesting family. Starts with a paranormal hook, which made me think it could go unserious or lightweight, and then completely surprised me by how absorbed I became in the various family stories.
• 
  Taylor

  I really enjoyed this. Am I going to reread it? No because I’m sobbing at the end. And because I felt too many emotions throughout. Highly recommend though. It’s not a ghost story. It’s not meant to be scary. It’s the history of a family. With a little bit of Casper the friendly ghost (Julia) mixed in.
  
  Thoughts throughout:
  
  • I can’t believe she had a great great grandparent that was French. Idk what ghost Julia says, Bertha was not her husbands daughter.
  
  • It’s interesting how similar flora and Julia were and how they were kinda mixed together to make the German bride.
  
  • Omg the fact that berthas husband max in nm paid for wolfgangs tuition in England when his family couldn’t get money out of Germany for it anymore 🥺🥺🥺
  
  • Omg max dying before he got him there. I love how connected the family is even though it’s distant relatives
  
  • Omg the dad of Wolfgang escaped to London with money he borrowed from cousins in Paris and then they died at Auschwitz.
  
  • I hate it here
  
  • fuck Nazis
  
  “Is it fair to judge as villains these Ordinary men of an earlier era simply because they played by rules we no longer honor?”
  
  “They has a little bit loose screw” I’m dead 💀😂
• 
  Lynn

  
  Today's Nonfiction post is on American Ghost:The True Story of a Family's Haunted Past by Hannah Nordhaus. It is 336 pages long and is published by HarperCollins. The cover has the corner of a room with white window drape fluttering in the wind. There is some mild language, no sex, and talk of violence in this book. The intended reader is adult, someone interested in Jewish American history, ghost stories, or just history in general. The story told in both first person and third; first person by the author as she talks about her travels to uncover her family's history and third person when talking about the history itself. There are first hand journals, newspaper articles, and other first hand sources for added depth. There Be Spoilers Ahead.
  
  
  
  From the back of the book- The dark-eyed woman in the long black gown was first seen in the 1970s, standing near a fireplace. She was sad and translucent, present and absent at once. Strange things began to happen in the Santa Fe hotel where she was seen. Gas fireplaces turned off and on without anyone touching a switch. Vases of flowers appeared in new locations. Glasses tumbled from shelves. And in one second-floor suite with a canopy bed and arched windows looking out to the mountains, guests reported alarming event: blankets ripped off while they slept, the room temperature plummeting, disembodied breathing, dancing balls of light.
  
  La Posada- “place of rest”- had been a grand Santa Fe home before it was converted to a hotel. The room with the canopy bed had belonged to Julia Schuster Staab, the wife of the home's original owner. She died in 1896, nearly a century before the hauntings were first reported. In American Ghost, Hannah Nordhaus traces the life, death, and unsettled afterlife of her great-great-grandmother Julia, from her childhood in Germany to her years in the American West with her Jewish merchant husband.
  
  American Ghost is a story of pioneer women and immigrants, ghost hunters and psychics, frontier fortitude and mental illness, imagination and lore. As she traces the strands of Julia's life, Nordhaus uncovers a larger tale of how a true-life story becomes a ghost story- and how difficult it can sometimes be separate history and myth.
  
  
  
  Review- Wonderful and interesting book about a family history, a woman's life, and a ghost story. Nordhaus writes this beautiful and sad tale of her great-great-grandmother with compassion and an eye for truth. She wants and does not want to contact her spirit. Nordhaus wants Julia to have moved on, so to speak, but she wants to know more about the woman who inspired the ghost story. Nordhaus does so much background work to this book. She travels to Germany to see where Julia grew up, she speaks with many different psychics about her, she reads her great-grandmother's dairy to try and understand their daily lives. In the end Nordhaus does learn a lot about her family but Julia is very difficult to find. But that does not ruin the book. It makes it more true to life, I think. In the real world people are very hard to understand, so I can only imagine trying to understand someone who has been dead for over 100 years and left behind no personal documents. A very good book.
  
  
  I give this book a Five out of Five stars. I was given a copy of this book by HarperCollins in exchange for an honest review.
  
• 
  D Dyer

  I started this book expecting a family history and perhaps a ghost story. And the book is that though not a particularly good one. Nordhaus seems unsure whether she wants to tell a story or relate history and consequently does both not very well. There is a very casual attitude about citing sources that I didn’t particularly appreciate and because so little facts are known about the subject, The life, death and subsequent haunting in Santa Fe New Mexico of the authors great-great-grandmother Julia Staab we spend a lot of time reading about what might have happened, how things might have been, and the various activities of other, sometimes later branches of the family which frequently have little or nothing to do with the central story but are well documented. This naration is interspersed with the authors visits with various psychics who attempt to communicate with Julia’s ghost. This amounts to more speculation as to what exactly Julia‘s life might have been like and how she might have died. I am still not sure what the author was attempting to communicate with this. And the book lacked any conclusion. I don’t mind uncertainty at the end of a book but I didn’t even feel that the author had resolved anything for herself, just that she had run out of things to write about.
• 
  Rose

  I listened to this book as an Audible book and loved it! I should hasten to add that I have traveled to Santa Fe several times and have always been fascinated by the story of the German Jews who settled there. In the Palace of the Governors history museum there are several portraits of these early settlers and now after reading the book, I can't wait to return there to match names to faces. The author explores the story of her great great grandmother (Julia Staab) who must have suffered from clinical depression (although the author never explicitly says so) and was one of the first German families to settle in the area. The author offsets depressing stories of her other German relatives who were killed in the Holocaust by whimsical tales of consulting several mediums in her search for Julia's story. If you are looking for a story full of ghost sightings and other paranormal activity, this is not the story for you. However, if you are looking for a well-researched story of one woman's search for her family's past and are intrigued by this kind of tale (as I am) this is the story for you.
• 
  Carol D

  This was truly an excellent book about a Jewish woman and her extended family who immigrated from Germany in the late 1800's to New Mexico before it was a state. The book is written by the great, great Grand-daughter of the matriarch of the family, Julia Staab. I enjoy historical books that include diaries and first hand knowledge from relatives and stories that are passed down through each generation. This book is not only about the Staab's and their involvement in helping to make Sante Fe a prosperous city, and New Mexico a state. It is also about the family members they left behind in Germany, the horrors that Julia's sisters and uncles experienced at the hands of their own countrymen. The fragile state of Julia's health in New Mexico and how she sought treatment for her illness in Europe and with the company of her sisters and children. Many family secrets and hidden stories spur this story on and yes the ghosts are not only those in-between worlds but also those that make up the history and imagery of her past.
• 
  Harriett Milnes

  Ms. Nordhaus covers a lot in this book: she researches and re-imagines the life of her great-great-grandmother, Julia Staab, who lived in Germany as a young Jewish girl and moved to Santa Fe with her new husband. Abraham Staab was a Santa Fe mover and shaker; he was involved in real estate and the mercantile business. They married in 1865 and crossed America by covered wagon! In the 1970s, Julia Staab became somewhat famous as a Santa Fe ghost, seen in her home which became La Posada, a hotel. Ms Nordhaus, who lives in Boulder, Colorado, consults with mediums, psychics, and dowsers. She travels to Germany and learns about the small village her great-great grandmother came from. Julia Staab was unhappy in Santa Fe; she had 7 children but missed her sisters and family back in Germany. The author finds a family diary and compares her own life in her twenties with her great grandmother's life. Tragically, the family members who stayed in Germany were lost in the Holocaust.
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  Jessica Leight

  This was an impulse pick (an impulse download, really) from my library's collection of electronic books, and it's one I regret! I hoped for an interesting work of social and personal history. However, at least half of the book is the author's chronicle of meeting psychics and other assorted charlatans, or her own personal reflections about ghosts. She doesn't in fact know very much about the life of the protagonist (her ancestor), and what she does know, it seems, was largely discovered by others. I'm surprised the book has much of an audience at all in its current form.
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  Diana

  First, this is NOT a paranormal investigation, exactly. It's not a spine-tingling ghost story. But it is the story of the author who learns a lot about her family and herself after pursuing her curiosity about ancestor Julia Staab, who is said to haunt a hotel that was once the family home. I really admire the way Nordhaus pursued Staab's story and shared it through her book. Recommended, especially for people with an interest in genealogy, local history, Jewish history, and immigrant history.
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  Connie D

  This is more a genealogical mystery than a ghost story; both aspects are fascinating. It was strangely a page turner...I wanted to know what Hannah found out.
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  Zoé

  Une enquête familiale brillamment menée. Hannah Nordhaus est l’arrière-arrière-petite-fille d’un des fantômes les plus célèbres des États-Unis, Julia Staab. Ses recherches sont édifiantes, elle parvient non seulement à nous délivrer un portrait juste de son ancêtre mais aussi à nous plonger dans l’atmosphère de l’époque (fin XIXe). Une très belle découverte.
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  Lena

  Having spent 3 years in my 20's living in Santa Fe, I was familiar with the ghost stories about La Posada, a ritzy downtown hotel. A descendant of the house's original owner and alleged ghost Julia Staab, author Hannah Nordhaus first became aware of the stories while visiting family in New Mexico as a child in the '70's. As she grew older and became a mother herself, Nordhaus decided she needed to know more about the woman behind the stories, and set off on a journey to discover as much as she could.
  
  The book she created as a result is challenging to describe, as it contains many different elements. As Nordhaus seeks to discover more about her famous ancestor, she unspools a fascinating history of early Santa Fe and the people who built it. These include Abraham Staab, a Jewish merchant from Germany who imported Julia from her well-to-do home in a small German town to a very rough and tumble frontier outpost. Archbishop Lamy also makes an appearance, as does Frieda Spielberg, another prominent merchant's wife.
  
  The tales of life in 19th century Santa Fe were genuinely fascinating to me, both because of speed at which Santa Fe was changing during Julia's time, and also because of how rigid European religious divisions melted under the blazing Southwest sun.
  
  Despite these insights into early Santa Fe, however, there isn't much in the record about Julia herself. One of Julia's daughters, Bertha, kindly left behind a travel diary Nordhaus mines in attempt to discover more about the private life of the family and Julia in particular. Though these pages shed as much insight as a you might expect from a boy-crazy teenager, the mystery of who Bertha's mother was, as well as how she died, remains elusive. The historical record contains plenty of commercial documentation left behind by Julia's husband Abraham, but the story of his wife is left mostly to the author's speculation.
  
  Though I got the impression Nordhaus is not much of a spirtualist herself, she gamely seeks out multiple psychics in attempt to fill in the gaps between the few formal photos of Julia and an occasional newspaper society mention. It is telling that the views of these various psychics regarding who Julia was and how she died vary widely, which Nordhaus astutely points out likely says more about the psychics themselves than about Julia.
  
  Despite these frustrations, Nordhaus leaves no stone unturned in her attempt to learn more, traveling to Julia's German hometown as well as German spa communities Julia visited in her attempt to cure her undescribed ailments. She pulls on every thread she can in the process, including one that follows one of Julia's sisters to the Theresienstadt concentration camp.
  
  Nordhaus is also open about her interior journey as she chases down these threads, making this book part memoir as well as part history, part spirtualist exploration and part genealogy study. Ultimately, she finds no definitive answer about Julia's maladies and what caused her death, though one theory seems historically highly probable.
  
  As she reflects on the night she spent in Julia's haunted bedroom, however, it seems Nordhaus found what she was personally looking for. Some readers reportedly did not, however, as they were expecting more ghostly shenanigans from the title of the book But as a former server at the Pink Adobe, a Santa Fe restaurant with its own ghost, as well as a guest at multiple "haunted" Southwestern hotels, I knew going in that ghosts in Soutwestern hospitality establishments are so common I'm pretty sure they are a required part of any business plan. The fact that the ghost part of this story is as ephemeral as Julia herself seems about right to me.
  
• 
  Jenny Shank

  
  http://www.5280.com/cultureandevents/...
  
  Colorado Bookshelf: "American Ghost"
  
  Boulder-based journalist Hannah Nordhaus goes hunting for the ghost of her great-great-grandmother, who is said to haunt a famed Santa Fe hotel, in this heavily researched historical (and personal) nonfiction narrative.
  
  BYJENNY SHANK
  MARCH 11 2015, 4:00 PM
  
  It's a safe bet that Boulder-based journalist Hannah Nordhaus has a better campfire ghost story than you do. Her tale involves a spirit that has alternately haunted and amused her skeptical family for generations. "Her name was Julia Schuster Staab," Nordhaus writes in her riveting new book American Ghost: The True Story of a Family's Haunted Past (Harper, 336 pages, $25.99). "Her life spanned the second half of the nineteenth century, and her death came too soon. She is Santa Fe's most famous ghost. She is also my great-great-grandmother."
  
  Nordhaus makes for an engaging narrator in part because she is a reluctant and good-humored ghost hunter. As a journalist and author of the nonfiction narrative The Beekeeper's Lament, facts have always been her friends. Still, she can't resist the pull of family lore about Abraham Staab, her paternal great-great-grandfather who moved from Germany to Santa Fe in 1858 and established a dry goods wholesale business. A shrewd businessman, he amassed a fortune, became one of New Mexico's elite, and built a three-story brick mansion near Santa Fe's Plaza in 1882.
  
  Compared to Abraham's conspicuous public presence, his wife Julia, also an immigrant German Jew, passed a quieter existence—at least while she was alive. "She was an adjunct and helpmeet to her husband, cloistered and Victorian, a creature both of her waning epoch and her own reticent and melancholy constitution," Nordhaus writes. "Were it not for the stories they tell of her ghost, we'd know nothing about her life at all."
  
  Beginning in 1979, people began to report supernatural experiences at the old Staab mansion, which is now a popular hotel, La Posada. Psychics, historians, journalists, fiction writers, and TV producers for both Unsolved Mysteries and Ghost Hunters swooped in to tell her story, employing various levels of factual accuracy and histrionic embellishment.
  
  Was Julia's death in 1896 at age 52 attributable to her grief over the loss of her eighth child? Did her hair turn instantly white? Did she go insane? Did Abraham confine her to her room or otherwise mistreat her as some of the accounts suggest? Nordhaus determines to separate fact from speculation in an investigation that takes her from New Mexico to Germany and back again.
  
  "The dead hold secrets that we can never know—and in that respect, ghost hunting and ancestor hunting are not so far apart," Nordhaus writes. "They both involve sifting through heaps of supposition, extrapolation, and unmoored clues interspersed with brief, infinitesimal wisps of evidence."
  
  Nordhaus structures American Ghost for maximum suspense, building up to reveal what she sees the night she spends in Julia's room at La Posada. She alternates chapters in which she details painstaking research through historical archives, German cemeteries, family sources, and her own DNA, with accounts of consultations with psychics, ghost hunters, and mediums whom she probes with questions that the available facts can't answer. Nordhaus follows her research wherever it leads her—including a hilarious experience on a ghost tour at the Stanley Hotel.
  
  When she delves into the history of hardships faced by Western pioneer women and discovers Julia's sister perished in the Holocaust, the story becomes incredibly moving.
  
  For anyone who loved reading Time-Life Mysteries of the Unknown books as a kid before setting them aside in favor of the triple fact-checked reporting of The New Yorker, American Ghost is a treat that appeals to both the mystery-craving and truth-loving parts of the brain. Written with heart, sensitivity, and intelligence, it's a tale well worth toasting with a round of campfire-roasted marshmallows.
  
  Meet the Author: Hannah Nordhaus will discuss her book with Lisa Jones at the Boulder Book Store (1107 Pearl St.) on March 18 at 7:30 p.m. ($5) and with Mark Stevens at the Tattered Cover (2526 E. Colfax Ave.) on April 8 at 7 p.m. She visits Book Bar (4280 Tennyson St.) on April 25 at 7 p.m.
  
  Jenny Shank's novel, The Ringer, won the High Plains Book Award. Her stories, essays, satire and reviews have appeared in The Atlantic, The Guardian, The Washington Post and McSweeney's. Follow her on Twitter @JennyShank.
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  J

  First of all I would just like to mention that there is a fight over who gets to keep this book - my sister or myself. As of this moment she is going to snatch it away while having it disappear in her collections although I have dibs on getting it back if she chooses not to keep it.
  
  When I read the first few pages I was caught up and then came upon the part with the first psychic. I was thinking to myself this isn't going to be good since she is going to weaken the book with all this drivel but the very real search using various psychics, ghost hunters and others grounded this book while also lightening the atmosphere. The more you get into the back story further into the book the more it weaves it together.
  
  Although it starts off to find out about a ghost the story isn't truly a ghost story. Instead the story is a beautiful journey to weave together the missing parts of the past, to find oneself and to be able to learn just what the world is about. In her hopes to solve a mystery Hannah was also showing us the way of resolving the mystery of herself.
  
  I loved how the book dived into the past and brought 19th century Santa Fe to us and what it was like to live in a world where funds removed obstacles where things were still untamed. Furthermore the book offers a tantalizing taste of Jewish life that is barely ever offered in history books. And the best part is when she goes off on a rabbit trail to explain what happened to her great-great-aunt it didn't detract from the story but added it.
  
  Hannah is a master storyteller and I loved this unexpected surprise that rested within these pages. And it had me crying when I read the simple yet powerful ending to this book. A true gem!
  
  **Received this book as part of the Giveaway at Goodreads.com for free in exchange for a review**
  
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  Amy

  5/5 ⭐️ American Ghost by Hannah Nordhaus
  
  I loved, loved, loved this nonfiction book about the author trying to separate family lore from the true story of Nordhaus’ great great great grandmother, a German Jewish mailorder bride who traveled across the dangerous American landscape in the mid 1800s to become wedded to the most successful businessman in the newly developing Santa Fe NM. The lavish home he later built for her has now been turned into a hotel, La Posada, and there are reports of it being haunted by her long ago grandmother. Based on the title, if you are expecting a Stephen King novel, you would be sadly mistaken although the author does meet with some mediums, Ghost hunters, etc to see what they can tell her about her grandmother. But I would always say Nordhaus is “agnostic” about them. She doesn’t believe in it truly but doesn’t completely rule out that they could tell her something useful. Nordhaus interviews members of the family, reads diaries from distant aunts, delves into regional archives, all in the pursuit to find out the true story of her grandmother and why people say she is haunting the hotel today. If you like genealogy, history, sociology (lots of interesting discussion about the woman’s role in society in the late 19th century), the history of Jews in Germany and America, and like a little supernatural plot thrown in, you will appreciate this book. If you ever wish you knew more about the inner lives of your long ago relatives, you can relate to Norhaus’ quest. I give this one 5 stars (and I only give a few of those each year. I’m pretty stingy with my 5s).I highly recommend this book.