We Hear the Dead »

DIANNE K. SALERNI is an elementary school teacher, author, and online book reviewer. She has previously published educational materials for teachers, as well as short stories. We Hear the Dead is her first full-length novel. With her husband and her two daughters, Salerni lives in Pennsylvania, where she is at work on her novel.

Maggie Fox didn't mean to create a new religion...

Publishers Weekly

In 1848, the Fox sisters--Maggie, 14, and Kate, 11--decide to play a prank: an accident of physiology allows both girls to make loud cracking noises with the joints in their legs and feet, and thereby convince the family that a spirit is haunting their house. For Maggie, it's the beginning of a lifelong deception; for Kate, it's an unlocking of her true spiritual gifts. Under the direction of their older sister, Leah, the girls move from amazing their rural neighbors to holding séances in upscale Rochester, where the scrutiny and stratagems become much more intense. The girls' longing for attention and Leah's greed motivate the charade, rapidly deforming their lives. First-time novelist Salerni tells the story primarily in Maggie's voice (with some chapters narrated by Kate) and sticks closely to facts upon which the story is based, to a degree that some readers may find exhaustive and which results in loosely connected events and dangling threads. But those fascinated by Spiritualism should welcome how the sisters' opposing perspectives result in a representation of reality that does not completely discount the possibility of supernatural agency. Ages 12 up. (May)

Author's Note ix Confessions xi Part One: The Haunting of Hydesville 1
Part Two: The Rise of a Religion 69
Part Three: The Affair and the Adventurer 185
Part Four: Education and Exile 283
Part Five: Folly and Fate 361
Afterword 423
A Final Word 425
Want to Read More? 426
Acknowledgments 427
About the Author 429