Reader Score
94%
94% of readers
recommend this book
Critic Reviews
Great
Based on 10 reviews on
"You're in for a treat...one of those books you can't put down...Due hit it out of the park." --Stephen King
A gripping, page-turning "masterpiece" (Joe Hill, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Fireman) set in Jim Crow Florida that follows Robert Stephens Jr. as he's sent to a segregated reform school that is a chamber of terrors where he sees the horrors of racism and injustice, for the living, and the dead.
Gracetown, Florida
June 1950
Twelve-year-old Robbie Stephens, Jr., is sentenced to six months at the Gracetown School for Boys, a reformatory, for kicking the son of the largest landowner in town in defense of his older sister, Gloria. So begins Robbie's journey further into the terrors of the Jim Crow South and the very real horror of the school they call The Reformatory.
Robbie has a talent for seeing ghosts, or haints. But what was once a comfort to him after the loss of his mother has become a window to the truth of what happens at the reformatory. Boys forced to work to remediate their so-called crimes have gone missing, but the haints Robbie sees hint at worse things. Through his friends Redbone and Blue, Robbie is learning not just the rules but how to survive. Meanwhile, Gloria is rallying every family member and connection in Florida to find a way to get Robbie out before it's too late.
The Reformatory is a haunting work of historical fiction written as only American Book Award-winning author Tananarive Due could, by piecing together the life of the relative her family never spoke of and bringing his tragedy and those of so many others at the infamous Dozier School for Boys to the light in this riveting novel.
Courtney Maum is a novelist and memorist.
October is Black Speculative Fiction month, the perfect opportunity for me to become a @tananarivedue completist. I’ve read (survived?) “The Reformatory” and am halfway through “Ghost Summer”, one of Due’s short story collections.
"It combines current concerns about race and justice for young Black men with an intensely readable, immersive story with decisive paranormal features. In fact, the novel’s extended, layered denouement is so heart-smashingly good, it made me late for work. I couldn’t stop reading."
3-time Hugo Award-winning SF/F/H blog. 🚀🚀Best Fanzine + 🚀Best Fancast = Awww yeah. Mmm...bagels...
@SagaSFF THE REFORMATORY by Tananarive Due, about a boy sent to a reform school set in Jim Crow Florida, out later this year - https://t.co/GsCCuh9dhv #IncomingBooks 3/3 https://t.co/lUCCqcrt2G
"With fully realized characters and well-placed twists, Due ratchets up the tension until the final, extraordinary showdown."
-Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
"A vividly realized page-turner, which is at once an ingenious ghost story, a white-knuckle adventure, and an illuminating if infuriating look back at a shameful period in American jurisprudence."
-Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW
"Her fiction is always powerful, and The Reformatory promises to be her most moving -- and horrifying -- tale yet." --Vulture
"One of the greatest living horror writers.... Sure to be as powerful as it is haunting." --CrimeReads
"Due knocks it out of the park every damn time." --Book Riot
--Stephen Graham Jones, bestselling author of The Only Good Indians, and My Heart is a Chainsaw
--Victor LaValle, bestselling author of The Changeling, and Lone Women
--S. A. Cosby, bestselling author of All the Sinners Bleed, Razorblade Tears, and Blacktop