Publisher's Synopsis
Julia Staab died in 1896 - but her ghost, they say, lives on. Here, Julia's great-great-granddaughter, Hannah Nordhaus, traces her ancestor's transfiguration from 19th-century Jewish bride to modern phantom. Family diaries, photographs, and newspaper clippings take her on a riveting journey through 300 years of German history and the American immigrant experience. With the help of historians, genealogists, family members, and ghost hunters, she weaves a masterful, moving story of fin-de-siècle Europe and pioneer life, villains and visionaries, medicine and spiritualism, imagination and truth, exploring how lives become legends, and what those legends tell us about who we are.
