Must family always argue at the holiday table? Kalamazoo author Bonnie Jo Campbell makes it her mission in her new novel, The Spirits (W.W. Norton & Company, 2026), to tell a different kind of Christmas Carol. Yes, there’s a ghost. The dreaded holiday table has seated around it a colorful gathering of family members who bring with them their secrets, their fears, their unresolved issues.
“I knew I was taking a big risk,” Campbell says. “It could almost be put on as a stage play that we are basically at a holiday table. So much of my work has been ranging and people are doing a lot of complicated things during the story, but I was really interested in—I mean, I love a Christmas Carol, and I love how Dickens had characters actually changing over the course of one evening. So I set myself the path of creating change in a very grumpy character, especially my main character—who I love, but she’s very grumpy—and I wanted to see if we can actually have human beings completely learning from one another.”
Holiday family tables, Campbell says, can end in discord, but the author wanted to work toward a different kind of ending. The discord is there. Campbell explored if such discord could result in clearing up misunderstandings, settling arguments, perhaps even resolving and smoothing out lifelong friction.
Bonnie Jo Campbell is the author of bestselling novels, The Waters, and Once Upon a River, Q Road, the story collections Mothers, Tell Your Daughters, American Salvage, and more. Her story collection, American Salvage, was a National Book Award Finalist. Her novel, Once Upon a River, was adapted into a full length feature film and released to international critical acclaim in 2020.
Campbell’s book launch will be at this is a bookstore/Bookbug, 3019 Oakland Drive, on Tuesday, October 13, at 6:30 p.m. RSVP is requested. An events calendar is available on her website.
