Behold the Many is the eerily beautiful story of three young sisters, Anah, Aki, and Leah. In 1913, they are sent away from their family for treatment for tuberculosis to an orphanage in Hawaii's Kalihi Valley. Of the three, two will die there, in spite of the nuns' best efforts to save them, and only Anah, the eldest, will grow to adulthood.
But, the ghosts of the dead children are afraid to leave the grounds of St. Joseph's, which is the only place they have known as home, and as Anah prepares to begin married life away from the orphanage, these ghost children grow angry. Desperate for the love of this girl who has communicated with them since her childhood, jealous of her ability to live in the physical world, and terrified of losing her, the ghosts are determined to thwart Anah's happiness. One of them places a curse on her that will reverberate through her future and that of her new family. As Anah struggles to appease the dead and to quiet her own guilt for living, it becomes apparent that only through one of her own daughters can redemption be attained.
"A mystical, magical, and, at times, macabre world unfolds in Lois-Ann Yamanaka's elegiac tale of three sisters. . . . A chillingly spectral portrait of souls tormented by love and guilt."
Booklist
"A novel with impressive scope and emotional power . . . One's words can heal, one's words can hurt. In Yamanka's vivid novel Behold the Many, her words do both, breaking our hearts and nursing them back to wholeness with the balm of her prose."
The Washington Post
"Tender, poignant, and written in unadorned prose, this is a book to savor."
