The Reformatory

Tananarive Due

See the full ranking

Set in Jim Crow Florida, this gripping and haunting novel follows Robert Stephens Jr. as he is sent to a segregated reform school that proves to be a chamber of terrors, for the living and the dead alike. The book won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Bram Stoker Award, and the Shirley Jackson Award, was named a New York Times Notable Book, and was a finalist for the Locus Award. 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 work of historical fiction written by American Book Award–winning author Tananarive Due, who pieced together the life of the relative her family never spoke of and brought his tragedy, and those of so many others at the infamous Dozier School for Boys, to light in this riveting novel.