Tombstone Tea »

Joanne Dahme currently works for the Philadelphia Water Department as its Watersheds Programs Manager. She received her civil engineering degree from Villanova University in 1980, and went on to earn a Masters of Journalism and Masters in Creative Writing from Temple University. Joanne has written a number of short stories and two young adult novels. She lives with her husband and son in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

In order to be accepted by the “in crowd” at her new high school, Jamie accepts a dare to spend one night in a local cemetery collecting rubbings from ten gravestones. Once inside the gate of the dark and frightening burial ground, Jamie meets Paul, a handsome boy who works as a caretaker at the cemetery. Paul explains to Jamie about Tombstone Tea: a fund-raising performance in which actors impersonate the people buried in the cemetery. The actors are supposedly rehearsing on this particular evening, but Jamie quickly discovers that they aren’t actors at all but the ghosts of men and women buried in the cemetery. When one woman decides to adopt Jamie to replace her lost daughter, our heroine fears she may never escape the cemetery.

Full of rich history and filled with a cast of ghostly characters, the third eerily descriptive novel from Joanne Dahme is just as creepy as her first novel Creepers.

Publishers Weekly

Dahme (Creepers) brings a cemetery to life in this quiet and gently eerie communion with ghosts. After moving to Philadelphia, sophomore Jessie is so desperate to fit in that she accepts a dare to spend the night in a local graveyard. There, she meets Paul, a night watchman, who tells her she's just in time for a rehearsal of actors impersonating the dead. It's a lie, of course, told to calm her as she meets spirits attracted to her life force and her ability to communicate with them. Drawn into a century-long family quarrel that is unsettling the cemetery residents, Jessie is asked to help Paul “fix things” (though, as Jessie admits, “ 'Fixing things' was hardly the phrase I would have chosen to connote banishing a crazed and malevolent spirit from the living and spiritual world”). The slightly confusing climactic battle simmers instead of sizzles, but fits with the understated tone of the novel. Readers should find the atmosphere old-fashioned—in a good way; Dahme's storytelling is more about the journey than the destination. Ages 12–up. (Sept.)