Ghost Talkers Is a Moving Secret History of WWI

American heiress Ginger Stuyvesant works as a medium for the British Spirit Corps. The name is something of a morbid pun, as the organization’s true work is hidden behind dance halls and parties, providing a respectable and sanctioned place for men on leave to enjoy a night out; to raise their spirits, so to speak. Despite the flash and fun of Spirit Corps’ cover, the true work is grueling. Ginger, and fellow true mediums like Helen, a woman from the Caribbean, are relatively rare, their séance circles rounded out with sensitives with less robust gifts. Together, the circles hear, and often relive, the dying moments of hundreds of soldiers, thousands, as their souls are drawn back for one last duty by a special tag in their kits.
While the Glamourist Histories are alternate histories, Ghost Talkers is more a secret history: these are real events of the World War I, theoretically suppressed or forgotten. The work of the mediums is closely guarded intelligence, kept clandestine through the machinations of such people as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini, their real world spat about spiritualism and séances occluding the reality of a spirit world accessible to some. And it is a secret the Germans are beginning to suspect, putting puts the Spirit Corps in danger. The Germans have begun blinding the dying soldiers they encounter, cutting off their sight so they cannot return military intelligence, even in death. This is also a murder mystery crossed with a spy novel, as Ginger, her fiancé Ben, and other members of the Corps try to ferret out a spy (or spies) and protect their organization and their lives.
As befits a novel about those that speak to the dead, one of the running themes is speaking for the ignored and discarded: the silenced. Military leadership doesn’t put much stock in the Corps’ work. Helen is gifted, more powerful than even Ginger, but she is a black woman, and something worse than ignored. A soldier who lost his foot stays on the front lines to do his duty in the séance circle, even though he could go home and stop this ongoing sacrifice. The Indian troops who give their lives along with the British aren’t even tagged to report to the mediums in death. The lives and service of these forgotten people are given powerful voice in the narrative.

The war is waged by young men in trenches (such young men), but they are not the only ones who sacrifice for their country. It’s a neat ouroboros: as the mediums acknowledges those lost soldiers, the Spirit Corps, and all the people it represents, are acknowledged in turn. The name of the novel seems to be no accident; Ghost Talkers invokes the Code Talkers of the Second World War, bilingual Navajo whose Native language, so long repressed, was turned into an unbreakable code for the Allies.  (There are secret histories within history itself.)
War is always hell, but World War I, this was a special kind: a planet-spanning family feud waged by antique military leaders who hadn’t caught up to the reality of mechanized war. Almost a million people died in the Battle of Verdun. A novel slotted into this conflict is always going to be grim, and one in which characters can talk to dead, doubly so—which is why I was so surprised at how easy it is to be swept up in this story. Kowal never loses sight of where her characters are, or the stresses they are under, but she tells their tale with warmth and humor. The mediums bear witness to those final moments, and that is an act of human kindness which tempers the horror. That they do it without acknowledgement is even more humbling.
Ghost Talkers is available now.