The Reformatory

Gracetown, Florida, June 1950. Twelve-year-old Robbie Stephens Jr. is sentenced to six months at the Gracetown School for Boys after kicking the son of the town's largest landowner in defense of his sister Gloria. At the segregated reformatory Robbie confronts the terrors of the Jim Crow South and witnesses disappearances among the boys forced to work as punishment. Robbie has a talent for seeing haints, or ghosts, which shifts from comfort to a window on the truth of what happens at the school. The book pieces together the life of a relative the author's family rarely spoke of while bringing attention to the tragedies tied to the Dozier School for Boys.