Mickelsson's Ghosts
by: John Gardner and Joel Gardner

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. A massive novel illustrated with photographs by Joel Gardner. John Gardner's final novel follows Peter Mickelsson, former football player and current Professor of Philosophy at Binghamton University. Mickelsson is driven, opinionated, probably a drunk, definitely bankrupt, and perhaps going completely mad. During his personal descent, which he seems powerless to arrest, he somehow scrounges enough money together to buy a farmhouse in northern Pennsylvania's Endless Mountains, which seems to be haunted by the ghosts of an incestuous family. Mickelsson's farmhouse sanctuary was (it turns out) not only the residence of Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet, but the scene of a murder; the place is haunted. Clean copy.