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Mississippi, 1927. The groanings are coming.

No town is perfect, but East Cobb comes close. It’s a wealthy all-Black Free Town—untouched by white oppression—where ambitious Thea Elliot and her husband plan to make good on their big dreams. Little do they know that the idyllic town teems with ghoulish, walking nightmares . . . that only the women can see.

Marah knows the groanings well. She is one of the carriers—women with the ability to pull traumatic memories from men. Populated by men entirely freed of their pain, East Cobb has flourished, even as the remnants of their memories haunt the town’s women. When an unexpected death drives Marah to discover more about her own power, Thea’s and Marah’s worlds collide. The sisters must confront the rotten core at the heart of East Cobb’s prosperity and choose what—and who—will survive the reckoning.

A gripping blend of historical fiction and Southern gothic psychological horror, Our Sister’s Keeper is a fierce exploration of Black sisterhood, rage, and resistance.

Don't just take our word for it...

“Jasmine Holmes’s foray into fiction feels like a homecoming. With warmth and a wealth of insight, Holmes skillfully crafts in East Cobb a setting and story that does what only art can; it illumines the past and the present, creating for the reader a clarity that lasts beyond the page. Our Sister’s Keeper is breathtaking, too lovely for a nightmare and too tragic for a dream.”
– Bethany. C Morrow, bestselling author of A Song Below Water and So Many Beginnings

“Our Sister’s Keeper combines historical details with incredibly imaginative fiction, making for an unforgettable story centered on women who bear the burdens of others. But what happens when they tire of suffering traumas that aren’t theirs, when it becomes clear that strength can be both a blessing and a curse? Set in the post–Reconstruction era South, Jasmine Holmes’s debut novel is a fascinating tale of past and present colliding in the twistiest of ways. This is a story of sisterhood in the face of obstacles closing in from every corner, and a testament to the strength and power of women united.”
– Del Sandeen, author of This Cursed House

Taste the very first page

Lucas Fulton was Marah’s least favorite client.

There was no kindness in his eyes as he sat opposite Marah, and Marah knew there would be no gratitude for her after the session. He was a perpetually sweat-slicked, mean little man, with coppery body odor and too-warm hands. His breath was always hot on Marah’s neck when he greeted her with a kiss to each cheek, like they were in France or something, as opposed to East Cobb, Mississippi. Whenever Marah forced herself to smile at him, he echoed it with a lackluster shrug of his left shoulder that made her wonder why he always requested her.

The two of them were sitting close enough for their knees to touch, eyes locked, while Clotilde poured the tea. The older woman was elegant—tall and lithe. Her thin frame, thin hair, and thinning skin ought to have led to a wispy quality, but something in her ramrod-straight back; her relentlessly high, starched collars; and her sweeping, formal gait spoke strength, even with her aging frame. Her white hair was pulled back into a chignon, any further adornment limited to the gold earrings studding her lobes. And though her skin was still taut in most places, the traitorous wrinkles on her neck revealed her advanced age.

Clotilde dressed simply, just like her girls, in muted colors and classic silhouettes. But where Marah often felt strange in her starched black dresses and restricting brogues, Clotilde was at home in the stiff wardrobe, a raven with perpetually rigid, out-stretched wings.

Marah waited until she was given the signal from Clotilde to officially begin the session. Lucas shuffled uncomfortably in the matching ornate wingback chair to Marah’s, which sat in the middle of Clotilde’s parlor, a parlor that hadn’t been redecorated since her Victorian childhood. Clotilde settled on a tufted loveseat to Marah’s left.

Every piece of furniture—the velvet green chairs, the maroon loveseat, the low marble-topped table where Clotilde set their tea—had claw-and-ball feet. Even the damask pattern on the pristine wallpaper and the swirling print on the richly colored Persian rug both looked a bit like claws. Marah’s own hands mimicked the motion echoed in the furniture and the wallpaper, each gripping one mahogany arm of her seat so tightly that her knuckles turned white. Everything in the room was clawed, desperate, grasping.

Finally, Clotilde turned toward the pair, smiled, and in a saccharine voice so different from the one she used with her girls, said, “Let’s begin.”

April 2026