Jack and the Ghost

A gothic, lyrical evocation of a shipwreck, ghosts, and lost—and found—love in a North Shore town 

 
Jack Cooper, last in a long family line of fishermen, lives alone in the remote North Shore town of Greyshore, haunted by grief. But he will discover what it means to be truly haunted when a ghostly woman appears to lure him to land’s end, to the beckoning waves that have broken his heart. In a tale weird and whimsical, as familiar as folklore and as strange as life itself, musical artists Chan Poling and Lucy Michell create a world where even the most hardened soul has to see that grief may be tough, but life is tougher. 

As Jack’s childhood friend, the loyal and endlessly optimistic Red, tries to counter the ghost’s allure, the story exerts its own charm, guiding us through a landscape of prose and pictures at once irreverent and dead serious. Though the book’s surreal seduction might call to mind the likes of Wes Anderson, Edward Gorey, or the Decemberists, it is, finally, Poling and Michell’s singular accomplishment, an enchanting imaginative leap into life’s haunted depths.

Chan Poling is a founding member of the seminal New Wave rock group The Suburbs and the popular jazz/cabaret trio The New Standards. His work in theater includes scores for the Tony Award-winning troupe Theatre de la Jeune Lune and the Ivey Award-winning Glensheen. He has been reviewed, featured, and lauded in the New York Times, The New Yorker, Time Magazine, Vogue, and Rolling Stone, among many others.

 
Lucy Michell is a musician and artist whose illustrations can be found on countless band posters, album covers, kids’ menus, and even T-shirts for Target. She has written and performed with Twin Cities darlings Lucy Michelle and the Velvet Lapelles, pop rock crew Little Fevers, and in collaboration with Chan Poling and John Munson.