Book excerpt: Our sense of place is permeated by ghosts from the past. In GhostWest, Ann Ronald takes the reader to historical sites where something once happened. Using the metaphor of hauntings, she reflects on how western history, literature, and lore continue to shape our visceral impressions of these sites. In chapters both lyrical and thoughtful, passionate and humorous, GhostWest covers sites in seventeen western states, including the Little Bighorn Battlefield in Montana, Willa Cather’s Nebraska prairies, and the Murrah Building bombing site in Oklahoma. Through these settings and their phantoms, the author mulls questions of why we find such ambience and artifacts so compelling. Volume 7 in the Literature of the American West series