The Visitor - by Eric W Gershman (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Anna is a child soldier in Angola's brutal civil war in 2003. She escapes its' clutches by hiding in a church and soon finds herself adopted by a wealthy Virginia family. Once in America, she is unknowingly brought to live on the very ground where her ancestors once toiled in slavery. One day, she slips into the past and witnesses an unspeakable murder of which she is the only witness. Now she must make the impossible decision of which world she belongs, until the decision is made for her, and she comes to understand the meaning of family in a way she could scarcely imagine.

In Gershman's riveting telling, the past and the present become intertwined in a story that that passes through generations as well as continents. Torn from her homeland into the world of foreign adoption, Anna tries to make sense of her fate, until she finds herself in yet a third reality: the cellar of her new home is a portal to the 1819 past, where she is member of a close-knit family, as well as a slave. From war-torn Africa to the hallowed stories that repurposed plantations now harbor, The Visitor is a spellbinding tale that calls to question what it means to belong.

Review Quotes

"A compelling tale
of war, escape, reckoning and revenge." -- Biddle Duke, New York Times, The New
Yorker online and The Surfers Journal contributor

"A thrilling tale
of mystery, time travel, and explosive story telling." -- Senor Joaquim do
Espirito Santo, Ambassador to the United States from Angola

"Like the works of
Colson Whitehead and N.K. Jemison, The Visitor uses the fantastic to
find a deeper meaning in the wounds history has left us with." -- Ashley
Warlick, recipient of the Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship

About the Author

Eric W. Gershman holds an MFA in historical fiction from Queens University in Charlotte, N.C. He is the founder of McGraw Hill's custom publishing financial unit, now a Standard & Poor's company. His short stories have appeared in numerous magazines and online journals. The Visitor is his debut novel. He resides in Vermont with his wife, Robin.