Mars + Pan Books

By Fritz Westenberger

Sixteen-year-old Ree Osterberg is drawn into the fading grandeur—and dark secrets—of his grandmother Margarethe’s ancestral home on New Orleans’ famous St. Charles Avenue. According to family legend, Emperor Napoleon himself entrusted her ancestors with a priceless treasure hidden somewhere within Maison de l’Ange. And only Margarethe’s tyrannical father Henri Delacoeur II knows where.

When the cruel patriarch dies under mysterious circumstances while celebrating his hundredth birthday, Ree believes the worst of the Delacoeur legacy has finally ended. But Henri’s final act is one last cruelty: he leaves Margarethe nothing, willing the crumbling mansion she has lived in for forty years to a rival niece. With eviction looming, Ree vows to help the grandmother who has proven his only ally in his struggles to understand his own emerging identity as a young gay man in a world that feels increasingly hostile.

Margarethe, however, believes their salvation lies beyond the living. She is convinced her beloved brother René—driven away decades earlier for being gay—has returned to Maison de l’Ange in an otherworldly form. Consumed by grief and vengeance, she persuades Ree to become a vessel for René’s spirit, hoping together they can finally destroy the monstrous legacy of their father.

But the presence that possesses Ree is not the brother Margarethe remembers.

As past and present collide within the haunted halls of the Delacoeur mansion, Ree must confront a terrifying question: when the ghosts of this family finally settle their score, will there be anything left of himself?