Kessia Harvin restores old family videos for a living, so she knows exactly what damaged tape looks like.
Damaged tape does not look back.
While digitizing footage from her grandmother’s funeral, Kessia watches a woman who has been dead for twenty-eight years open her eyes, turn toward the camera, and warn her not to rewind the tape again. Then another recording surfaces—this one carrying a message from Kessia’s mother, a woman she thought she understood, warning her that something in their family has been buried for far too long.
Soon voices are calling from empty hallways, the dead are speaking through old recordings, and memories Kessia trusted are beginning to come apart. Whatever her family tried to bury didn’t stay buried.
And now it knows Kessia is watching.
When We Bury the Living is a Black Southern Gothic horror novel about family secrets, haunted memories, generational fear, and the terrible things people will bury in the name of protection.