Junie: A Novel by Erin Crosby Eckstine (Hardcover) (PREORDER)

Fiction - Historical - Literary - Ghost - African American and Black

RELEASE DATE: 2/4/2025  (WILL SHIP DIRECTLY FROM OUR SUPPLIER'S WAREHOUSE AND ARRIVE 1-2 DAYS AFTER THE RELEASE DATE)

A young girl must face a life-altering decision after awakening her sister’s ghost, navigating truths about love, friendship, and power as the Civil War looms.

“The richly textured prose quickly pulled me into [Junie’s] treacherous yet magical world.”—Charmaine Wilkerson, New York Times bestselling author of Black Cake
 
Sixteen years old and enslaved since she was born, Junie has spent her life on Bellereine Plantation in Alabama, cooking and cleaning alongside her family, and tending to the white master’s daughter, Violet. Her daydreams are filled with poetry and faraway worlds, while she spends her nights secretly roaming through the forest, consumed with grief over the sudden death of her older sister, Minnie.
 
When wealthy guests arrive from New Orleans, hinting at marriage for Violet and upending Junie’s life, she commits a desperate act—one that rouses Minnie’s spirit from the grave, tethered to this world unless Junie can free her. She enlists the aid of Caleb, the guests’ coachman, and their friendship soon becomes something more. Yet as long-held truths begin to crumble, she realizes Bellereine is harboring dark and horrifying secrets that can no longer be ignored.
 
With time ticking down, Junie begins to push against the harsh current that has controlled her entire life. As she grapples with an increasingly unfamiliar world in which she has little control, she is forced to ask herself: When we choose love and liberation, what must we leave behind?

AUTHOR BIO:

Erin Crosby Eckstine is an author of speculative historical fiction, personal essays, and anything else she's in the mood for. Born in Montgomery, Alabama, Eckstine grew up between the South and Los Angeles before moving to New York City to attend Barnard College. She earned a master's in secondary English education from Stanford University and taught high school English for six years. She lives in Brooklyn with her partner and their cats.

"The richly textured prose quickly pulled me into the protagonist's treacherous yet magical world. I was drawn to the story of Junie, an enslaved teenager with a love of books and nature who must navigate difficult truths about her family and friendships in order to survive her times." --Charmaine Wilkerson, New York Times bestselling author of Black Cake

"Propulsive and haunting, young Junie takes on the many burdens handed to her while reaching for the hope she wasn't meant to have. Erin Crosby Eckstine breathes urgency, wit, and resilience into her preternaturally gifted protagonist. Junie is a lush and immersive story about power, reckoning, love, and redemption. . . . A true beauty of a book." --Diane Marie Brown, author of Black Candle Women

"Junie is the beating heart of this powerful and moving coming-of-age novel, insisting on her right to language, love, and a life on her own terms. Rich in historical detail and packed with suspense, this is a story of survival I will not forget." --Erin Swan, author of Walk the Vanished Earth

"A haunting tale about power, family, and the difficult choices we sometimes have to make for (or in spite of) the people we love. Here is a novel that takes a clear-eyed look at the brutality of slavery without ever depriving the people harmed by it of their agency and humanity." --Rita Chang-Eppig, author of Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea