Sign up for our newsletters to receive our Most Anticipated Books of 2025!

Summary and Reviews of The Reformatory by Tananarive Due

The Reformatory by Tananarive Due

The Reformatory

A Novel

by Tananarive Due
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (8):
  • Readers' Rating (1):
  • First Published:
  • Oct 31, 2023, 576 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Sep 2024, 576 pages
  • Reviewed by BookBrowse Book Reviewed by:
    Jordan Lynch
  • Genres & Themes
  • Publication Information
  • Rate this book

About This Book

Book Summary

A gripping, page-turning novel set in Jim Crow Florida that follows Robert Stephens Jr. as he's sent to a segregated reform school that is a chamber of terrors where he sees the horrors of racism and injustice, for the living, and the dead.

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.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $50 for 12 months or $18 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

BookBrowse Review

BookBrowse

Gracetown, Florida in 1950 is deep in the Jim Crow South and home to the Gracetown School for Boys, a reformatory school with a dark reputation. After kicking a white teenager while defending his older sister Gloria, Robert Stephens Jr., a Black 12-year-old, is sent to Gracetown, where he is thrown into a world of ghosts, brutal punishments and a superintendent with dark motives and darker secrets. Desperate to save her brother, Gloria pushes back against the blatant racism of her town to fight for Robert's freedom and her own safety. Based on true events at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Florida, The Reformatory is a story of the horrors of the Jim Crow South and a pair of siblings who would walk through hell to get back to one another...continued

Full Review (750 words)

This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For full access, become a member today.

(Reviewed by Jordan Lynch).

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $50 for 12 months or $18 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Beyond the Book



Bringing Them Home: The Use of DNA to Identify Remains at the Dozier School for Boys

Tananarive Due and her son Jason during the excavation at the Dozier School in 2013The Reformatory, the newest novel by celebrated author Tananarive Due, tells the horrific story of the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys. Once the country's largest reform school, Dozier supposedly intended to rehabilitate its students into productive citizens, but instead the boys were terrorized and tortured, and some were even killed (see Beyond the Book for The Nickel Boys). Although deaths at the school were documented between 1914 and 1973, burials at the school's cemetery, known as Boot Hill, were only recorded from 1914 to 1952 and indicate 31 burials on the site during that time. Statements from former inmates, however, suggested that many more boys had died at the school, and in 2011, the state of Florida authorized Dr. ...

This "beyond the book" feature is available to non-members for a limited time. Join today for full access.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $50 for 12 months or $18 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked The Reformatory, try these:

  • The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store jacket

    The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

    by James McBride

    Published 2025

    About this book

    More by this author

    From James McBride, author of the bestselling Oprah's Book Club pick Deacon King Kong and the National Book Award–winning The Good Lord Bird, a novel about small-town secrets and the people who keep them.

  • A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens jacket

    A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens

    by Raul Palma

    Published 2024

    About this book

    A genre-bending debut with a fiercely political heart, A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens explores the weight of the devil's bargain, following the lengths one man will go to for the promise of freedom.

We have 6 read-alikes for The Reformatory, but non-members are limited to two results. To see the complete list of this book's read-alikes, you need to be a member.
More books by Tananarive Due
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $50 for 12 months or $18 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

BookBrowse Book Club

  • Book Jacket
    The Wager
    by David Grann
    From the bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon, a gripping story of shipwreck, survival, and savagery, culminating in a court martial that reveals a shocking truth.
Who Said...

Good as it is to inherit a library, it is better to collect one.

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Beast of the North Woods
    by Annelise Ryan

    When a local fisherman is mauled to death, it seems like the only possible cause is a mythical creature.

  • Book Jacket

    Harlem Rhapsody
    by Victoria Christopher Murray

    The extraordinary story of the woman who ignited the Harlem Renaissance.

  • Book Jacket

    Three Days in June
    by Anne Tyler

    A new Anne Tyler novel destined to be an instant classic: a socially awkward mother of the bride navigates the days before and after her daughter's wedding.

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

T the L

and be entered to win..