Rebecca Entel, author of FINGERPRINTS OF PREVIOUS OWNERS, on tour March/April 2018

About Fingerprints of Previous Owners

Paperback: 212 pages

Publisher: The Unnamed Press; 1st edition (June 13, 2017)

One of the Chicago Review of Books Best Books to Survive Trump

At a Caribbean resort built atop a former slave plantation, Myrna works as a maid by day; by night she trespasses on the resort’s overgrown inland property, secretly excavating the plantation ruins the locals refuse to acknowledge. Myrna’s mother has stopped speaking and her friends are focused on surviving the present, but Myrna is drawn to Cruffey Island’s violent past. With the arrival of Mrs. Manion, a wealthy African-American, also comes new information about the history of the slave-owner’s estate and tensions finally erupt between the resort and the local island community. Suffused with the sun-drenched beauty of the Caribbean, Fingerprints of Previous Owners is a powerful novel of hope and recovery in the wake of devastating trauma. In her soulful and timely debut, Entel explores what it means to colonize and be colonized, to trespass and be trespassed upon, to be wounded and to heal.

“How drastically different perspectives can simultaneously coexist is the foundation for Entel’s debut novel, Fingerprints of Previous Owners.”–The Cedar Rapids Gazette

“One of the most notable debut novels I’ve read this year is Rebecca Entel’s. Fingerprints of Previous Owners tells the tale of a maid who by day works for a Caribbean resort built on the grounds of a slave plantation, by night she searches for artifacts to unlock the island’s tragic past. It’s a quiet novel, but breathtakingly beautiful.”–Rachel Léon, Chicago Review of Books

“This is the first novel by Entel, and it is a magnificent one. Her prose is lyrical, luminous, and each detail has been planted as precisely as a foundation stone.”–Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)

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About Rebecca Entel

Rebecca Entel began this novel while teaching on San Salvador Island in the Bahamas. She is Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at Cornell College, where she teaches African-American and Caribbean literature, creative writing, and the literature of social justice. She holds a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin.

Her short stories and essays have been published in Guernica, Joyland Magazine, The Madison Review, Electric Literature, Literary Hub, and elsewhere, and several have been shortlisted for awards from Glimmer Train, Southwest Review, and the Manchester Fiction Prize. Fingerprints of Previous Owners is her first novel.