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.
The Reformatory is a brutal, heartbreaking story set in the old South in the days when good old boys would not think twice about lynching a Black man or child for looking at a white woman.
When 12 year old Robbie defends his sister from inappropriate advances he gets sent off to reform school. More than just a punishment for Robbie, this is a plot intended to make his father come out of hiding.
Robbie's father was accused of a crime he didn't commit and skipped town before they could murder him, leaving his children behind with an elderly woman.
This reformatory is more a prison than a school, where the living inmates barely outnumber the dead. Many boys never left after not surviving their sentence thanks to the brutal treatment by the sadistic warden who relished any chance to torture the boys for any slight or made up infraction of his rules. The warden and the children are often plagued by ghosts.
If this sounds familiar, you may have seen the real life news stories about the human remains found at the now closed Dozier School, where it should be noted that the author had a relative who did not survive.
The writing depicts the language of those days. If child abuse and racism require trigger warnings for you then you may not be able to handle this book so proceed with caution.
The pacing was a little slow at times but by the final third, I was nearly sick with worry over whether or not Robbie would survive.
4 out of 5 stars
My thanks to Gallery / Saga Press
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