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  • Published: 9 August 2026
  • ISBN: 9780241791127
  • Imprint: Viking Fiction
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 416
  • RRP: $49.99

The Great Wherever

  • Shannon Sanders



A dazzling multigenerational story, a portrait of a family and its history in the American South, and a contemporary heroine to lead us through, perfect for fans of Yaa Gyasi, Min Jin Lee, and Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

NAMED ONE OF 2026'S MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS BY: ESQUIRE | LITERARY HUB | BOOKPAGE | DEBUTIFUL

Okay, but the afterlife? It’s nothing like it looks in the movies . . .

A year after the death of her father, Aubrey Lamb receives a phone call from a distant cousin. She has inherited a share of a farm, down in the sun-streaked plains of Tennessee. Seeking distraction, and a way to erase a mounting pile of debt, Aubrey makes her way South to meet a family she barely knows.

Watching her arrival with great interest, and wry scrutiny, are four ghosts: Aubrey’s ancestors, the keepers (and spillers) of the farm’s secrets. As Aubrey gets to know her living family, another story unfolds in parallel: the history of the land, beginning with its purchase by her great-grandfather, one of the first Black landowners in the community, the four children set to inherit it, their bitter rivalries, and the tragedy that 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.

Dazzling and expansive, The Great Wherever is a multigenerational portrait of the American South, exploring land and legacies, race and generational wealth, and the sharp fragments of the past – how they spark and shine against the surface of our ordinary lives.

  • Published: 9 August 2026
  • ISBN: 9780241791127
  • Imprint: Viking Fiction
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 416
  • RRP: $49.99

Praise for The Great Wherever

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

The Great Wherever is fertile ground for Shannon Sanders’ 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 1, with great care, heart, and unyielding humor. By 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

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, author of international bestseller, The Storm We Made

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’ 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