Carson Faust’s debut novel, If the Dead Belong Here
, out now from Viking, is a Native American Southern Gothic that shows how the past and the present are connected by all that we carry. Here are some of the approaches he considered while bringing this story to life: 1. Combatting silence with story. The work that eventually became If the Dead Belong Here
began as a container for the anxieties Faust felt as he reflected on the silences that fell across his family. For much of his life, the deaths and losses faced by his family often went unspoken. It was expected that those stories would remain unspoken. But by seeking out and listening to his grandmother’s stories and memories, Faust found that piercing the quiet allowed for healing, understanding, and connection. As his grandma Betty says: “Ghosts can’t hurt you. They can only make you hurt yourself.” This novel offers something further—that, perhaps, the living must mend the dead to heal themselves.
2. Treating inherited stories andhistories with respect. Folklore is a means of passing on knowledge—whether it be to keep our loved ones safe, to keep the past alive, or to look toward the future. Often, stories are our inheritance. Like our elders, these stories come before us, and should be treated with respect and reverence. It is up to us, as recipients of story, to find the ways story and history inform who we are and who we are becoming. The characters in If the Dead Belong Here
also become recipients of family story and folklore—and that is what makes them resilient. 3. Connecting folklore to family history. Grief and resilience are threads that run through the whole of If the Dead Belong Here
. They inform each other. Family story and folklore are braided in this novel too. Just as the origin of Faust’s novel was silence and disconnection, stories of the Little People or ucv’ske in Natchez culture often center silence. You are not to speak of them after dark. They only appear to you when they trust you—or when they wish to be seen. These rules echoed how Faust learned about his lost relatives. You need to be careful about who and when you ask about those you’ve lost. But sometimes, the oldest stories can teach us the most about our futures. Sometimes, the stories that scare us the most are the ones that heal us. | 
