Spokane Is Reading turns to horror with Tananarive Due’s ‘The Reformatory’

In “The Reformatory,” author Tananarive Due blends historical fiction and horror to tell the story of the Gracetown School for Boys, a fictionalization of the institution Dozier School for Boys set in Florida in 1950.

“Gloria remembered, as if for the first time, exactly what Papa had said as they passed the grounds: ‘That’s the first place they start killing us,’ ” Due wrote. “And for the first time she had noticed the barbed wire. The memory clapped her with such force that it carried the scent of her father’s pipe. This was where her brother was being sent. A killing place. Papa had said so.”

On Thursday, Due will appear remotely at 1 p.m. at the Spokane Valley Library and 7 p.m. at the Central Library, for 2025’s Spokane Is Reading.

Spokane Is Reading is an annual reading program that selects one book for the entire community to read each year.

Due was going to appear in-person, but plans were shifted due to unforeseen circumstances. The audience will still be able to ask Due questions.

Sharma Shields, Spokane Public Library writing education specialist and Spokane Is Reading chair, said that staff members from the Spokane Public Library, Spokane County Library District and Auntie’s Bookstore compose the committee that chose “The Reformatory.”

“We read very widely, a lot of different titles,” Shield said. “… I think there was hesitancy, in some ways, to choose ‘The Reformatory’ because it is in the horror genre. And Tananarive Due is kind of considered a horror writer, but the work to us read almost like literary historical fiction.”

Shields said other important selection criteria was whether the book was available in paperback and if it had an e-book and audiobook version.

“I think the historical aspect of this novel has ended up feeling really important to us on the committee because of the erasure that’s happening for Black writers across the country, Black storytelling across the country, the book banning happening across the country,” Shields said. “Even the art being removed from the Smithsonian, all of it, it feels like even more important that this story is being highlighted.”

Due explained in an email Q&A with Shields that the book is rooted in family stories. When Due’s mother died, she found out her mother had an uncle named Robert Stephens who died in 1937 at age 15 at the Dozier School for Boys.

“I had never heard of the Dozier School for Boys, the horrific facility operating between 1900 and 2011, where countless boys were traumatized, sexually assaulted and sometimes – far too often – buried by other children in unmarked graves in the cemetery dubbed Boot Hill,” Due said in the email. “I had never known that my mother had lost an uncle there – she may not have known herself. Another relative who is a namesake of Robert Stephens did not know for whom he had been named. After the tragedy and trauma of losing a child to incarceration, it was as if Robert Stephens had been erased from the world.”

The book follows the character of 12-year-old Robbie Stephens Jr., who had been sentenced to six months, as well as the story of Gloria, his older sister working to free him. For that character, Due’s own mom was the blueprint.

“Mom laid down in front of garbage trucks to support striking sanitation workers in 1968 – the cause for which Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. ultimately gave his life,” Due wrote in her email. “In 1960, she and her sister, my Aunt Priscilla Stephens Kruize, were among eight Florida A&M University students who spent 49 days in jail rather than pay their fine after a sit-in at a Woolworth’s lunch counter. She wore dark glasses her entire life after being teargassed for leading a peaceful demonstration in 1960 – a police officer recognized her as one of the organizers and said, ‘I want you!’ before he threw teargas into her face. As a result, she suffered lifelong sensitivity to light.

“My mother was my first superhero.”

Readers can get a copy of “The Reformatory” from their local library or Auntie’s Bookstore, which will be selling copies at both events.