I gave birth to my infinite being,
but I had to wrench myself out of me with forceps.

—Fernando Pessoa

For the soul is a wanderer
with many hands and feet.

— Joy Harjo

What the Dead Can Say tells the story of Jenny Wood, the ghost of a three-year-old child who develops, early in her afterlife, the ability to absorb and share memories with other ghosts. This sets Jenny on an unlikely adventure of finding herself among the multiple selves that accumulate within her.

Jenny may be an unusual ghost, yet how different is she from us, the living? How many others inhabit us, our memories of them circling within our secret interiors?

Originally, What the Dead Can Say lived an analog life—a limited edition of 1,000 print copies launched in June 2023. Then, over the span of five months, the vast majority of this print run was hand-delivered by Author Unseen to Little Free Libraries in 28 states—blue and red—across our geographically and culturally diverse country. The journey took just over 10,000 miles.

With a design that included no blurbs, no author description, no front flap synopsis of the novel's content, no author's name to be found anywhere (except "Author Unseen" on the title page), What the Dead Can Say was intended to look like no other book. A mystery to be discovered (though not solved), as these readers in California, Oregon, and New Hampshire have attested.

On the off-chance that you did not happen upon a copy of What the Dead Can Say in your local Little Free Library, this expanded digital serialization is especially for you.

How so, expanded? The digital version contains bonus content not found in the print edition:

  • Two extra "final" chapters.
  • "What Jenny Could Have Said (but didn't)" appears at the end of each chapter and explores narrative paths that Jenny or her other ghosts might have taken, and other secrets Jenny might have revealed. Altogether, the two extra chapters and the "What Jenny Could Have Said (but didn't)" sections add 70 pages to this digital serialization of the novel.
  • Each chapter of the novel's digital version is accompanied by evocative line drawings by the artist Emily K Mell.
  • The weekly release of the 21 chapters will be accompanied by a brief audio excerpt, read by a contemporary fiction or nonfiction writer, poet, or playwright. These are archived on the Jennyverse Chorus page.

You'll get access to everything if you sign up for a paid subscription

Right now, you have free access to the first three chapters of What the Dead Can Say. But for the low low price of $20, you'll get full access to all of the novel's serialization as each new chapter is delivered weekly—along with the bonus content. Everything that's been published so far. Everything still to come. (With 21 chapters, that's less than a buck a week.)

You'll also receive a (very brief!) email newsletter announcing the weekly arrival of the latest chapter (as well as a link to the latest addition to the Jennyverse Chorus), right up to Chapter 21. You'll never have to worry about whether you missed a chapter.

Your subscription makes this site possible and allows What the Dead Can Say to extend its afterlife.

Jenny and her ghosts thank you.