The Reformatory by Tananarive Due

The Reformatory by Tananarive Due
Published by Simon & Schuster
Publication date: October 31, 2023
Genres: Book Clubs, Fiction, Historical, Horror

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Siblings Gloria and Robert live on their own in a small Florida town after their father was run out of town for trying to get the local mill workers to unionize. Their position is precarious because it’s the 1950s and Jim Crow, the KKK, and racism are still strong in Florida. So, when 12-year-old Robert kicks a white teenage football player in the leg for making advances on Gloria he’s sentenced to 6 months at the local boarding school for juvenile delinquents. This is the setting for The Reformatory, Tananarive Due’s searing novel about a ‘school’ that was really a labor camp hiding in plain sight amidst a disinterested population.

After Robert’s sentencing The Reformatory splits into two narratives, Robert’s as he tries to survive at the school and Gloria as she tries to get him out. Robert tries keeping his head down and does make a friend who shows him the ropes, but what little faith he has in the system is shattered when he realizes that his 6-month sentence has no meaning. The school uses the boys as slave labor and only releases those who survive until they’re 21. This, plus the fact that he can read only serves to enrage some of the other boys and the warden, making him an easy target for beatings.

While Robert’s experience is the more terrible, Gloria has to deal the brick wall that is a Black person having any rights in Florida at all. She discovers an unexpected ally in the woman she works for, who helps her try and find a lawyer—no small feat as they have to be Black and there are none anywhere within driving distance of their town. She tries to visit Robert but is not allowed, leaving her distraught as she juggles the responsibilities of an adult despite being only 16.

Due adds a supernatural element to The Reformatory as Robert is able to see and feel the school’s ghosts or, haints as they’re called. The ghosts are an active enough part of the novel that things build to a Stephen King-like level of supernatural action by the conclusion, but not in a way that takes over the story. They’re just one more set of characters in a cast that covers the spectrum of outright evil to those who know something is very wrong, but are too afraid to do anything.

This is a story told so skillfully that the atmosphere is pervasive. It’s not difficult visualizing the impact of an attic dormitory with only one window and hundreds of boys who spend their days picking cotton. None of The Reformatory’s landscape feels manufactured.  Instead, you’re locked in on the page with her characters, whether it’s scared preteen boys far from home or a young woman raised to believe in herself, but being faced every day with people who despise her.

There is horror and then there is the even more terrifying specter of horror based on reality. The novel, like Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys, is based on the Dozier school, a Florida boys’ school known for its abuse and even murder of boys and young men. A place that wasn’t even shut down until 2011 when mass graves were discovered on the property. And yet, for as dark as The Reformatory is, it does end with hope. Absolutely outstanding historical fiction.

 

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