Tananarive Due

"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." --

A Novel

The Reformatory

Lindsay

Florida soil is soaked with so much blood, it's a wonder the droplets don't seep between your toes with every step.

"I don't believe in evil in most ways," Ms. Lottie said. "I believe in the devil, alright, but man don't need no hope from Satan to do what folks call evil. Man do evil every day, and call it 'doing their job'. Slave drivers was 'doing their job', beating the skin off folks. Slave catchers, setting dogs to rip out eyes and limbs."

Telling the truth always broke the peace.

"Segregation isn't unique to the South," Lowman said, thinking of how often he'd seen Colored children chased from his Lower East Side library, "just, more flamboyant."

Maybe there was no way for a Negro with fixed ideas to avoid being sent to jail.

The Reformatory quotes

Join the club