Tananarive Due has achieved new heights with The Reformatory-- a gripping and brutally haunting meditation on the legacy of racism in the Jim Crow South, and the cruelties enacted at the Dozier School for Boys throughout its operation. I'm sure there'll be a ton of Nickel Boys comps when this releases, but The Reformatory stands on its own as a deeply researched passion project with incredibly well-realized leads.

The story follows two young siblings, Gloria and Robert Stephens, after Robert is swiftly and unfairly sentenced to spend six months in a Florida reformatory school for boys. The novel reimagines and draws partly upon the lives & experiences of the author's family members, and alongside ghosts, grief, and unimaginable violence, you can still feel incredible care, catharsis, and warmth in every page. The narrative may be contained to several weeks in the 50s, but Due really manages to capture how the threads of slavery, segregation, and racial trauma carry the weight of centuries of dehumanizing violence and thread through to the present day. While Due doesn't shy away from the brutalities her characters face, there is incredible love, familial strength, and resilience in this novel. Though there is unspeakable pain and loss, there is also incredible hope; there is kinship, there is justice and release. I cried so many times while reading this-- for the boys who lived these atrocities. For the boys who didn't survive them, and the families who continue to mourn them and search for answers.

The Reformatory is a nuanced and deeply empathetic portrait of the suffering Dozier's boys (and black families in general) endured throughout the twentieth century. An emotionally rewarding page-turner and an excellent addition to the growing canon of black horror.

Having only previously read a quirky YA zombie short story called ‘The Garage’ by Tananarive Due with a family hiding out from the creatures in their garage, I was happy to explore her work further. The Reformatory did not disappoint, packing a serious punch blending a supernatural story with that of racial and social injustice in fifties Florida. Note that this book uses authentic and very realistic language from the period, all of which would be considered highly offensive these days. But the fact that it does not hold back helps creative a very rich and immersive reading experience.

The Reformatory is set in the midst of a very dark period of American history where ‘Jim Crow’ laws enforced segregation and many Black people lived in fear of organisations such as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) hate group, lynchings were a genuine fear, with little or no support from law enforcements. Main character Robert Stephens Jr. becomes a victim of these laws in the early stages of the book, when he is sent to a segregated reform school, for kicking a white teenager, where he experiences the terrors and horrors of racism and injustice. It is also a place he sees ghosts, a key part of the story which is saved for the second half of this chunky 576-page novel.

This did not necessarily feel like such a long novel but the split narrative, which took long sections away from the prison, certainly slowed the action and one could not help wonder if the book would have been stronger if it concentrated entirely on the Gracetown School for Boys reformatory. The second narrative concerned Robbie’s older sister Gloria, effectively his carer since the death of their mother, and her fight to get him released from the reformatory. This was complicated by the fact that their absent father, who was a known agitator, had left under a cloud for the city, leaving his children to fend for themselves. Gloria felt especially bad about her brother’s incarceration as he was trying to defend her after unwanted advances from a white teenager.

This part of the story with Gloria was clearly making very worthy points about the struggles of Black people with the law, who were at the mercy of judges and had no apparent rights to appeal, but took the focus away from what was an excellent ghost story. In the early part of the story the horrors of the reformatory are enough to turn anybody’s blood cold, with the supernatural story of ‘haints’ developing very closely. Interestingly, I could not recall ever reading about this particular type of ghost which according to different dictionaries are connected to several southern American states (including Florida) and are often the descendants of African slaves.

Think of your worst ever cinematic or literary prison and then some and you will begin to realise how awful this reformatory truly is, almost in documentary style, especially for a young boy who had never previously been in trouble. The warden of the prison Fenton Haddock was a truly monstrous creation, a sadistic and cruel psychopath who took pleasure from punishing and torturing boys for minor discretions and then praising The Lord afterwards. But there is hope, Robbie makes friends with Redbone and Blue and realises that he must quickly learn the rules to survive. But after an agonising trip to ‘The Funhouse’ where punishments are doled out, which is little more than a torture chamber, Robbie finds himself in the radar of the warden as Haddock realises the boy can see ghosts (haints).

The Reformatory was a powerful and moving work of historical fiction which beautifully blended a story of ghosts, survival, love, friendship and the struggles of the Black man in segregation era America. The story was inspired by a relative of the author who served time in the infamous Dozier School for Boys.

Absolutely incredible! Eerie genre-bending novel perfect for fans of Stephen Graham Jones and Silvia Moreno-Garcia.