The Haunted Apartment on Lawrence Street: A Novel by Elizabeth Rivera

Some buildings hold more than their walls.When Carmen Rivera signs the lease on 1014 Lawrence Street, she sees what she needs to see - a renovated apartment, affordable rent, a fresh start for her family in Hartford, Connecticut. What the landlord doesn't mention is that every tenant before her left without asking for their deposit back.From the first night, fourteen-year-old Elizabeth Rivera knows something is wrong. Not the sounds old buildings make. Not her imagination. Something else - something in the walls, in the air, in the cold that finds her even in July. She doesn't tell her mother. Carmen would brush it off. And Elizabeth doesn't want to be that girl, the church girl who sees demons in everything, not when she's still trying to figure out who she is in this new city.But the building has a history that no renovation ever touched. And on the third floor, their neighbor Don Wilfredo is doing something that isn't helping.One by one, the Rivera family begins to crack. Carmen starts slipping across the street to the Pentecostal church she swore she'd left behind. Little Jonny stops sleeping alone. Upstairs, something is feeding on Don Wilfredo's fear and growing stronger. And Elizabeth - raised in the faith, carrying a name she was taught had authority over darkness - is running out of reasons to stay quiet.The Haunted Apartment on Lawrence Street is a story about what happens when a family that has walked away from God moves into a place that knows exactly what they used to carry - and what it cost them to put it down.Because the spirits on Lawrence Street are not afraid of Santería. They're not afraid of locked doors or running water or the cold.But they are afraid of something.