Left Behind: The Cahill Ghost
by Carren Strock
198 pages
ISBN: 978-1-5154-5835-7
published by Fantastic Books
(October 28, 2025)
Set against the backdrop of a small-town Western New York community in 1905, Left Behind: The Cahill Ghost is the story of 13-year-old Lettie Cahill who goes to church one day only to see her mother, father, and her siblings, rising from coffins beside the pulpit. She lets out a primeval scream, but no one hears her, and she has a chilling realization—she is dead too.
While navigating the eerie in-between of her past and present, Lettie develops the skills needed to make herself known to her best friends, Maybelle and Harold, and to her Aunt Catherine, who lives in a house that was once a part of the underground railroad.
There, she meets two unexpected resident ghosts. One, who became the first black physician after Aunt Catherine rescued him as a young slave, and the other, a painter who blamed herself for her best friend’s death and vowed not to go to her heareafter until she had saved a life.
They become her mentors, and through them Lettie learns how to maximize her ghostly abilities. Flashbacks come to her and, as she begins to piece together the final moments of her life, she realizes that what she thought was an accident, was something far more horrifying. She and her family had been murdered.
Driven by a mix of rage and fierce determination, she uses her ghostly abilities to expose the truth and bring her murderers to justice.
In spite of a grim beginning, and sordid, ugly antagonists she must deal with, Lettie is an engaging and sweet ghost. Her humor and inquisitiveness remain constant throughout and she does a good job of turning paranormal skeptics into believers.
Carren Strock 