The Great Wherever - by Shannon Sanders (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Named a Most Anticipated Book of Summer 2026 by NPR, People, Oprah Daily, Harper's Bazaar, Town and Country, Esquire, The New York Post, The Boston Globe, WGBH, Real Simple, The Root, Our Culture, Woman's World, Publishers Weekly, Literary Hub, Modern Mrs. Darcy, BiblioLifestyle, and Bookpage

A July 2026 Book of the Month Club Pick

The dead are relentless gossips, or at least these dead are.

An impulsive and heartbroken woman inherits her father's share of a Tennessee farm that is rich in family secrets and occupied with busybody ghosts in this sweeping family portrait.

At thirty-two, Aubrey Lamb is stumbling through adulthood. An underpaid gig worker in Washington, DC, she's grieving the end of a serious relationship and the recent loss of her father. When Aubrey learns she has inherited his stake in a sizable Tennessee farm she sees an opportunity to get out of the city--and to erase a mounting pile of debt.

Watching her arrival with great interest are four ghosts--Aubrey's ancestors, who've staked their own claims to the farm and who never hesitate to pass judgment on the mistakes made by the living, whether romantic, financial, or sartorial. As Aubrey reconnects with her living family, another story unfolds in parallel: the history of the land, beginning with its purchase by Thomas, Aubrey's great-grandfather and one of the first Black landowners in his community. Though Thomas hopes to give his children a homestead on which they could flourish, the land proves to be a burdensome inheritance. Over the years, it turns the Lambs against one another, culminating in a catastrophic tragedy that splinters the family and echoes through the decades.

Now, as the clock ticks on a potential sale of the farm, the ghosts fear expulsion from the home they've made, and Aubrey must weigh the hopes and burdens of her forebears with the very real needs of her future.

An expansive family saga told with a wry and distinctly modern voice, The Great Wherever is at once grand and intimate; it explores the ways we learn to define ourselves through and against our families, how we carry on after loss, and how the past lives on in all of us.

Review Quotes

Praise for The Great Wherever

"Delicious. . . . Our ghost-narrator hashes out the tale with an endearing mix of tenderness and resentment. . . . Woven through this story are enough characters and plotlines to fill several more novels, but Sanders handles the abundance of material with restraint. . . . Sanders's narrative shifts gorgeously through time and place to reveal all that's been passed down through generations of Lambs."
--The New York Times

"Expectations were running high for Shannon Sanders' first novel. . . . A playful and poignant intergenerational saga about a haunted farm in which ancestors watch over and critique the living for posterity and entertainment, The Great Wherever leaps over that bar....Inventive and new....I was hooked from the first sentence."
--NPR, 15 Most Anticipated Books of Summer

"A gripping saga of Black legacy."
--People, Must-Read Books for Summer 2026

"Wonderfully satisfying....[The] voice is one of the more winning I've encountered in any novel of the past decade."
--The Boston Globe

"If you like a little moral complexity along with your entertainment, I recommend Shannon Sanders' rich, Black, generational epic The Great Wherever. . . .Fans of The Love Songs of W.E.B DuBois, this one's for you."
--WYPR

"A brilliant creation--funny and chaotic."
--Good Housekeeping (UK)

"Unforgettable. . . .I predict The Great Wherever will be a summer hit this year, and a strong book prize contender."
--BUZZ magazine (UK)

"Sanders writes with pace and emotion, tackling a multigenerational story rooted in the American South. Oh, and the afterlife has a starring role."
--Elle (UK)

"Sanders's debut novel sings, joining a choir of voices alongside Toni Morrison and August Wilson in conjuring memory with contemporary urgency."
--The Brooklyn Rail

"This is a truly magnificent novel from a uniquely powerful voice. A bighearted triumph."
--Kirkus (starred review)

"A gripping multigenerational epic of land, home, and inheritance. . . . Sanders poses timely questions of ownership and ancestry, and she packs the novel with indelible imagery. . . .This resonates."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Sanders has created something remarkable here, that feels haunting, hopeful, funny, sad and longing all at the same time."
--Red Magazine

"Powerful. . . .I ate up this debut. "
--Modern Mrs. Darcy

"A debut novel that is part family saga, part historical fiction, part ghost story, and entirely captivating. . . . Sanders expertly portrays familial relationships, imbuing her characters with pathos and humor as they grapple with the complexities of family legacy."
--Booklist

"Sanders is a sublime writer with unparalleled talent. I could read her writing all day, every day."
--Debutiful, The Most Anticipated Debut Books of 2026

"Simply put, this book is a pleasure and a treasure. Witty and wise, intelligent and engaging, heartbreaking and heartmending. Shannon Sanders is a writer to keep your eye on. "
--Tayari Jones

"The Great Wherever is an epic and deeply human story of family and fortune that reaches across the divide between the living and the dead with grace, humor, and emotional conviction. Shannon Sanders's love for her characters is matched only by her ability to make us care about them as much as she does. I'm in awe of what she accomplishes in this astoundingly good debut novel."
--Patrick Ryan, New York Times bestselling author of Buckeye

"The Great Wherever is fertile ground for Shannon Sanders's vast gifts as a writer. Dead or alive, righteous or wrong, every one of her Lambs is a singular, beautiful mess, together growing the rich family history she seeds, from page one, with great care, heart, and unyielding humor. By the novel's end, I felt as dazzled as one of the ancestors at the edge of the pond, in awe of all its beauty and magic."
--Dawnie Walton, author of The Final Revival of Opal & Nev

"In The Great Wherever, Sanders masterfully bridges generations and yet is still able to home in on her characters' intricate inner lives. By the end, they all feel like family, and reading their story feels like coming home. Gripping, moving, witty, and wise, this is historical fiction at its finest."
--Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, author of On the Rooftop, a Reese's Book Club pick

"What unfolds in The Great Wherever is not a single story but a gathering of them--voices overlapping, correcting, and remembering differently. Shannon Sanders allows those differences to stand, creating a narrative that feels layered, unsettled, and true to the way families actually move through time -- together, but not always in agreement. Sanders writes the Lamb family with enormous care and irresistible vitality; even their ghosts carry vanity, heartbreak, and humor. An utterly transporting debut."
--Essie Chambers, bestselling author of Swift River

"The Great Wherever is an arch yet heartwarming tale of family, the ghosts that haunt them, and the place we call home. Between the story's heartbreaks, we get leaps of humor that made me love every member of the Lamb family, the ones dead and the ones alive. It is rare to root for every character and yet I found myself doing so. What a gift of a book."
--Vanessa Chan, internationally bestselling author of The Storm We Made

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

"Sanders's flair for home life links her work to a tradition of 'domestic fiction, ' a line traced from Alice Munro and Marilynne Robinson back to Flannery O'Connor and Zora Neale Hurston, whose narrative pace Company frequently evokes. In the work of these women writers, Sanders may have confirmed her own taste for the Southern surreal."
--The Adroit Journal

"Sanders excels in this masterly debut collection about a Black extended family . . . describing their slights, heartaches, and misbehavior with exquisite emotional acuity. This is a winner."
--Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Remarkable. . . . The characters throughout are expertly rendered and deeply relatable. . . . Sanders' stories are unforgettable, making this a strong and promising debut."
--Booklist, starred review

"Shannon Sanders's stories simply blew me away. The Collins family and the many folks in their orbit are endlessly fascinating, frustrating, and fun to meet on the page. Company is a riotous, dazzling debut that is as profound as it is entertaining."
--Deesha Philyaw, author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies

"A brilliant debut with each incisive chapter offering a new window into the beguiling Collins family. This delighted me."
--Ann Napolitano, New York Times bestselling author of Hello Beautiful

"Company is a story collection that eats like a novel. Each story feels like a completely different vision of the same majestically sprawling family, as these neurotic high achievers struggle to balance the duties of kinship, social appearances, and honesty to their true selves. Reading Shannon Sanders makes me want to visit home."
--Tony Tulathimutte, author of Rejection and Private Citizens

"Company introduces an unforgettable cast of characters who remind us that family can be both wound and salve. Sanders offers sharp and original insight into the intimate politics of race and class and the impossible rules we've inherited to navigate them. This is a brilliant and immaculate debut."
--Danielle Evans, author of The Office of Historical Corrections

About the Author

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 one of the best books of 2023 by Publishers Weekly and Debutiful, and was shortlisted for the 2024 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous publications, including One Story, The Sewanee Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Electric Literature, and has received a PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. She lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, with her husband and three sons.