If the Dead Belong Here: A Novel

Finalist for the Minnesota Book Award | Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize | Longlisted for the Crook’s Corner Book Prize | A CrimeReads Best Debut Crime Novel

“Fierce, lyrical, and unrelentingly intimate . . . This is a story about hauntings both literal and inherited, a child gone missing, and the women who carry everything that came before. Faust doesn’t just bend form—he breaks it open. —Morgan Talty, national bestselling author of Night of the Living Rez

“Carson Faust debuts as a literary force." —Monica Brashears, author of House of Cotton

When a young girl goes missing, the ghosts of the past collide with her family’s secrets in a mesmerizing Native American Southern Gothic

When six-year-old Laurel Taylor vanishes without a trace, her family is left shattered, struggling to navigate the darkness of grief and unanswered questions. As their search turns to despair, Laurel’s older sister, Nadine, begins experiencing nightmares that blur the line between dream and reality, and she becomes convinced that Laurel’s disappearance could be connected to other family tragedies. Guided by her elders, Nadine sets out to uncover whether laying the ghosts to rest is the key to finding her sister and healing her fractured family.

Carson Faust captivates in this chilling literary debut that confronts the specter of colonization and the generational scars it leaves on Native American families. Steeped in Indigenous folklore and drawing from the author’s own family history, If the Dead Belong Here examines what it means to be haunted—both by the supernatural and by terrors of our own making. Faust crafts a powerful, kaleidoscopic tale about the complicated legacies of violence that shape our present, the importance of honoring our past, and the resilience of a family—and a people—determined to heal from old wounds.