“An epic novel of horror and real history. Tananarive Due displays all her powers as a master of the form, there’s frights and chills and also so much love. I tore through this book. This novel is a straight up masterpiece, it should be read and remembered for a long time.”
– Victor LaValle, bestselling author of The Changeling, and Lone Women

“The Reformatory is a masterpiece — a new American classic of the uncanny. I was gripped from the first lines to the catch-your-breath desperation of the final pages. Even in the tale’s grimmest moments, Tananarive Due insists on the almost supernatural power of simple kindness. You have to read this book.”
– Joe Hill, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Fireman

“Moby Dick might have flipped America on its back to show the rotting underbelly, but The Reformatory‘s looking just as closely at our bad history, and somehow finding the heart beating underneath it all. This is the novel I’ve been waiting for. It breaks your heart, but it also holds it together.”
– Stephen Graham Jones, bestselling author of The Only Good Indians, and My Heart is a Chainsaw

Robert Stephens held his breath and counted to three, hoping to see Mama.

Some mornings his nose tickled with a trace of talcum powder or Madam C. J. Walker’s Glossine hair grease, and he felt . . . something hovering over him, watching him sleep. His groggy brain would think . . . Mama? If he gasped or sat up too quickly, or even wiped the sleep from his eyes, it was gone like a dream. But sometimes, when the June daylight charged early through the thin curtain and broke the darkness, movement glided across the red glow of his closed eyelids like someone walking past his bed. He felt no gentle kisses or fingertips brushing his forehead. No whispers of assurances and motherly love. Nothing like what people said ghosts were supposed to be, much less your dead mama. That morning he was patient, counting the way he’d practiced—one one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand—and slitted his eyes open.

A woman’s shadow passed outside of the window above him, features appearing in the gaps between the sheets of tinfoil taped across the glass. In a white dress, maybe. Maybe. Moving fast, in a hurry.

“Mama?”

The shadow didn’t stop, or turn around, or step inside the room through the wall to show her face. His hope that she would say something to him died before it was fully awake. That’s how fast she was gone. Always.