This debut novel begins with news of a death, but soon the dead are sitting up and demanding attention. Ramona must cope with a talkative sister-in-law and her husband, plus her grandparents, all dead, and all moving into her home that looks out on the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. She must endure their constant interference with the present. The past comes alive too in the novel"s eponymous journal, one written in 1924 by the village historian and sculptor, a relative of Ramona"s. Here the past and present are surreally intertwined.