Picking Up the Ghost

“African magic and folklore color this unusual coming-of-age story” as a teenage boy faces a haunting journey after hearing of his estranged father’s death (Publishers Weekly).
 
It isn’t easy living in the dying city of St. Jude, Mississippi. But when a letter informs fourteen-year-old Cinque Williams of the passing of the father he never met, he suddenly comes face to face with the struggles he’s always avoided: his incomplete past and uncertain future. That’s when the strange hand reaches down through his dreams to snatch away his heart.
 
A curse meant for his father condemns Cinque to a slow death even as it opens his eyes to the strange otherworld around him. With help from the ghost Willy T, an enigmatic White Woman named Iku, an African Loa, and a devious shape-shifter, Cinque gathers the tools to confront the ghost of his dead father. But he will learn that sometimes too much knowledge can be dangerous—and the people he trusts most are those poised to betray him.