American Spirits

By: Russell Banks

Narrated by: Danny Campbell

From one of America’s most celebrated storytellers come three dark, interlocking tales about the residents of a rural New York town, and the shocking headlines that become their local mythologies.

A husband sells property to a mysterious, temperamental stranger, and is hounded on social media when he publicly questions the man’s character. A couple grows concerned when an enigmatic family moves next door, and the children start sneaking over to beg for help. Two dangerous criminals kidnap an elderly couple and begin blackmailing their grandson, demanding that he pay back what he owes.

Suspenseful, thrilling, and expertly crafted, American Spirits explores the hostile undercurrents of our communities and American politics at large, as well as the ways local tragedies can be both devastating and, somehow, everyday. Ushering the listener through the town of Sam Dent, Russell Banks has etched yet another brilliant entry into the bedrock of American fiction.

©2024 Russell Banks (P)2024 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“Banks is a master of mastery . . . If the residents of Sam Dent were merely stereotypes of a political movement, then American Spirits wouldn’t have the impressive heft that it does. Instead, they are, to a person, indelible characters, with lives full of meticulously observed details . . . [The stories in American Spirits] accomplish so much, so purposively with the brute mechanisms of plot and suspense. Once you read them, you won’t stop thinking of their unnerving violence and elegiac endings.” — Casey Cep, The New Yorker

“What a beautiful farewell gift the great Russell Banks has left us in American Spirits. Better than anything I’ve read, this book gave me hope about our current political situation—it gave me a way to think of it that isn’t all despair. These three utterly compelling stories are so truthful about America as to be almost unbearable. They’re funny, frank, full of love and each of them delivers an epic punch, in its own flavor—they feel Shakespearean in their daring—in how fearlessly they exploit the dramatic space they’ve mapped out. (Several times while reading I found myself thinking: ‘My God, he’s going there.’) “American Spirits has a beautiful, elegiac sense; we feel the passing of time and the fading away of things, possibly even of the American experiment. But they’re also about rebirth; what looks like decline is only decline when seen through the limited lens of one human life. Banks’ view, in this, his last book, is vast, deeply in touch with the long arc of history. He accomplishes all of this in the classic way, by looking with interest and affection and acceptance at individuals, whom the writer has summoned out of the air and come to love. “I learned so much about storytelling and about our country reading these stories, and I finished the book full of gratitude that such a man, and a writer, as Russell Banks could have existed. We’ll miss him and, I expect, won’t see his like again.” —George Saunders, author of Liberation Day

“Violence woven with politics and human foible was [Banks’s] hallmark . . . Banks artfully captures the precariousness of existence before existence turns tragic, the way feelings of masculinity get tangled up in that precarity, and how macho posturing only makes it worse . . . In Banks’s parcel of America, residents try to escape the past, but the past always has a way of getting back at us.” —Mark Athitakis, Los Angeles Times

Brilliant writing by a masterful storyteller

So many great things to say about this book, great writing, compelling story, captures and elucidates the look, feel and fortunes of a region, people and ultimately creates a portrait of humanity and its time on the planet. So sorry won’t be able to hear and learn more from Russell Banks but what he did write is iconic and continues to resonate.