Deaths at a Florida ‘reform’ school inspire a masterful horror novel

“Black history is Black horror,” novelist Tananarive Due has said. In her stunning new novel, “The Reformatory,” Due underscores this insight to brilliant effect.

Set in the Jim Crow South in 1950, the book unsparingly depicts the violence and trauma inflicted on the children and teenagers imprisoned in the Gracetown School for Boys, a juvenile detention home inspired by the real-life Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Fla.