One True Story of “There is Only One Ghost in the World”, as told by co-author Sophie Klahr

In this blog post, Co-author Sophie Klahr shares her insights on the book cover for her new book, There is Only One Ghost in the World

I have not concealed this fact, but it is worth saying aloud: the child sitting on a bench in high knee socks wearing the dinosaur head, on the cover of There Is Only One Ghost in the World, is my half-brother Josh Klahr. He is 11 years older than me and lived with his mother for much of my childhood, which was just enough time and distance for me to have missed knowing him for most of my childhood; it was only in my 30’s that my brother and I really came to know one another as people—the child in the picture, in many ways, is not someone I knew.

When it came time for Corey and me to think about proposing cover ideas, the photograph you see was the first idea I proposed, and became our only desired image. When the image proposal was met with enthusiasm by the press, I turned to my family to find out more about the picture. And suddenly: a mystery—no one was sure where the photograph was taken; no one is sure who took the photograph. The paper maché head (is it paper maché?) did not belong to Josh—we don’t know whose head it is. Someone in my family snapped the photograph, yet whenever a recollection of the moment is expressed, it dissolves just as quickly; nobody seems able to firmly claim the moment in their memory. Was it after a school play that Josh was in? Or someone else was in? Was the moment after some sort of parade, taken in haste as the family was heading home? What is the structure beside the leather bench, below that somehow-torn corner? A speaker? A heater? Where is the rest of the costume? Not even Josh remembers. I am still curious what’s going on in that boy’s head, he texted to me, when he saw the photograph on our cover.

Corey and I never expected to write a book that is so much about family, but family is a primary thread in There Is Only One Ghost in the World. And because I am never someone who would have claimed prior to this book to write fiction, and because fiction is not created in a vacuum, autobiographical moments have slipped into these pages, sometimes twisted by sensitivity or mis-remembering or deliberate reconstruction in the service of an image or line. Sometimes, during the creation of this book, I read pieces of drafts to family members, and was told that while the shape of an incident may have been true, I had the facts wrong, melted one year into another, put someone’s words in another person’s mouth. Throughout the book there is sometimes a sister where there was no sister, a cousin where there was no cousin, a mother who never said those things at all. And yet sometimes, the father really is my father, the child really Corey’s child.

Someone made fun of me once for my “ridiculous allegiance to the truth.” You dear reader, have been told that this book is fiction. Yet / And in the deepest way, when it is moving and meaningful, what happens in anything called Fiction feels true for the reader. So, do the real-life moments we’ve slipped into this book matter in their trueness?

Our title tells you There Is Only One Ghost in the World, and you will have to discover whether or not we return to this assertion, whether or not, in the world of the book, this is true. It is true that the child on the cover, in that mask, is my half-brother. We are all curious about what’s going on in that boy’s head.

---