Betsy Gaines Quammen in Conversation with Tiya Miles

Country Bookshelf is thrilled to welcome Betsy Gaines Quammen in conversation with acclaimed author and historian Tiya Miles to celebrate the upcoming release of Betsy’s new book, This Haunted Land: Reckoning with Ghosts and the Stories that Shape America.

Why do humans need ghosts? And what do ghosts have to teach us?

In This Haunted Land: Reckoning with Ghosts and the Stories that Shape America. Betsy Gaines Quammen investigates some of America’s most enduring ghost stories and uncovers how ghost stories can help us come to terms with our unsettled past. With curiosity, a bit of skepticism, and an open-hearted willingness to learn from the living and the dead, she takes readers on a riveting, sometimes spooky journey into the haunted towns, lands, waters, and parts of history that we too often ignore. From a once-booming uranium mine community now entombed in Colorado’s Mesa County, to America’s oldest fort on the east coast of Florida, This Haunted Land interweaves memory, mourning, folklore, and social anxiety—and shows that politicized efforts to rewrite history can be defeated by listening to the specters of the past.

Tickets are not required for this event, but RSVPs are always appreciated! Please RSVP by reserving a FREE general admission ticket on this page.

The event at a glance:

• On July 20, please arrive early to secure your seat. Seating is general admission, first come, first served.

• At 6pm, the event will begin. The speakers will take audience questions following the program.

• After the talk, the authors will sign books.

• Can't attend in person? Order signed copies on our website or by calling (406) 587-0166. Signing requests must be placed 24 hours before the event and can only be taken for books we currently have on our shelves.

About Betsy Gaines Quammen

Betsy Gaines Quammen is a historian and award-winning writer. She is fascinated by how cultural views shape relationships to landscape —and she loves a good ghost story! Betsy received a PhD from Montana State University, where she studied religion, history, and the philosophy of science. Her dissertation focused on Mormon history and the roots of armed public land conflicts in the United States. Betsy's work has appeared in the New York Times, New York Daily News, and the History News Network. She is the author of This Haunted Land, American Zion, and True West. She lives in Bozeman, Montana, with her husband, writer David Quammen, three big dogs, a sturdy cat, and a lanky rescue python.

About Tiya Miles

Tiya Miles is the Michael Garvey Professor of History and Radcliffe Alumnae Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. She is a public historian, academic historian, and creative writer whose work primarily explores the intersections of African American, Native American, and women’s histories in the context of place.

Miles is the author of eight books, including the National-Book-Award-winning All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake (2021,) and Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People (2025), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography. Miles’s other works include Wild Girls: How the Outdoors Shaped the Women Who Challenged a Nation; The Dawn of Detroit; Tales from the Haunted South; The House on Diamond Hill; Ties That Bind; and The Cherokee Rose, a ghost story set in the Native American plantation South. Her essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Atlantic, the New York Review of Books, and elsewhere.

Miles was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.