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A Novel
by Katherine Packert Burke
From the author of the "vibrantly, brilliantly alive" (James Frankie Thomas) Still Life, a haunted family reenacts the violent night their lives changed forever.
Exactly 19 years ago, in May of 1992, 17-year-old Roland St. Cloud fatally stabbed his twin sister Edna's three best friends. The slaying became instant tabloid fodder leading to a bestselling true-crime book and horror movie franchise. Each year on the anniversary of her family's undoing, Edna reenacts the murders. She is joined by her husband, Roger, the night's definitive chronicler; her younger sister Calla, a failed playwright who spends her days lost in online gaming; her younger brother James and his girlfriend Heather; and her teenage daughter Wren. Together, the St. Cloud family seals the windows and doors of the house and lights a grim candle. After their macabre theatrics there's nothing to do but wait for dawn, talk among themselves, and remember.
All Us Saints is a literary family drama packaged as a two-act play. Behind the curtain, Packert Burke unveils Roland's childhood as a closeted trans girl in the early 90s and offers a brilliant and scathing commentary on the cisgender gaze.
"Written in two acts, with a dramatis personae and prologue, this story feels more expansive than a night in a single house has any right to be…The book unflinchingly examines each family member's secrets and traumas and will appeal to readers who love true crime, literary-leaning mysteries, and houses haunted by their own inhabitants. With its messy web of well-crafted characters and astute commentary on the ways the cis gaze makes monsters of all those it doesn't understand, All Us Saints is as uncomfortable as it is unputdownable." —Booklist
"All Us Saints is a gorgeous puzzle-box of a book, with the pieces carved from dread, sex, and secrets. Katherine Packert Burke has inventively inverted the psycho-killer, revealing something new and, once again, shocking." ―Torrey Peters, author of Stage Dance and Detransition Baby
"Katherine Packert Burke is a genius. With incisive, irreverent prose and an encyclopedic knowledge of philosophy, theater, and film, she banishes commonplace narratives to masterfully capture the betrayals and succor of family, the snare of self-mythology, and the temptation, the danger, of the familiar within ritual and art. Utterly unforgettable, this book is both miracle and, dare I say it, haunting." ―Morgan Thomas, author of Manywhere
This information about All Us Saints was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Katherine Packert Burke is a graduate of the Clarion Writer's Workshop in San Diego and the MFA program at the University of Alabama. Her debut novel, Still Life, was published by W. W. Norton in 2024. She lives in Minneapolis, MN.
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