When the Reckoning Comes

June 1, 2021

DEBUT Mira, a Black girl; Jesse, a Black boy; and Celine, a white girl, were inseparable as children, until the night Mira and Jesse went to investigate the ghosts at a long-neglected local plantation. Mira and Jesse saw things that no one would believe, and the friendship of all three was destroyed in the aftermath. Now Mira returns home, at Celine's request, to attend her wedding, which is being held on that plantation; it has been restored to its former beauty, but it's still haunted by the enslaved people who were tortured there. This revenge-themed horror is narrated by Mira, with interludes from a Greek chorus of enslaved people, who speak from the past and prime us for the bloody retribution about to be unleashed, giving new meaning to the idea of reparation. The engrossing novel follows Jesse and Mira as they come to terms with the immediate supernatural violence and the true horror experienced by Black Americans in the 21st century. VERDICT Playing on the disturbing trend of celebrating happy moments on restored plantations, McQueen cranks the discomfort up a notch to create a story where readers will actively cheer on the restless spirits. Hand it to readers who like horror where systemic oppression and monsters collide, like John Fram's The Bright Lands or Tananarive Due's The Good House.

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June 15, 2021
The dark history of a North Carolina tobacco plantation casts a shadow on 21st-century visitors in McQueen's wrenching debut novel. Mira, a Black high school English teacher in Winston-Salem, hasn't returned to her rural hometown for more than 10 years when she receives a call from her old friend Celine, who's White, saying she's marrying a local dentist who's the heir to a tobacco fortune and asking Mira to come to their wedding. Though Mira is shocked to discover that the wedding is taking place at a restored plantation now functioning as a sort of antebellum theme park, complete with locals playing the roles of slaves, she agrees to attend, partly because she wants to see Jesse, who's Black and was formerly close to both her and Celine. Her friendship with Jesse fell apart when, as kids, they broke into the Woodsman Plantation, the same place the wedding is being held. Mira ran away because she thought she saw ghosts, and, soon after, Jesse was accused of killing a man whose body washed up in the river nearby. Returning to the plantation, Mira again strongly senses the presence of slaves who were killed during an attempted rebellion and feels that they are about to take revenge on the descendants of their former masters--a feeling that is borne out as the wedding goes awry in deadly ways. A subplot involving a romantic attraction between Mira and Jesse seems shoehorned in, and some of the later plot twists are more convenient than convincing. But McQueen carefully walks the line between visions and reality, weaving the voices and stories of the former slaves into the present-day lives and thoughts of her characters as history that has been denied and buried asserts itself. An original, if sometimes melodramatic, look at how the past bleeds into the present.

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June 28, 2021
McQueen’s arresting debut novel (after the essay collection And It Begins Like This) features a vengeance-fueled ghost story on a former tobacco plantation. Mira, a Black high school teacher in present-day Winston-Salem, N.C., fled her segregated hometown of Kipsen on a college scholarship, leaving behind her close friend and love interest Jesse and their friend Celine, who is white. McQueen shuffles Mira’s flashbacks to high school with passages describing memories of the enslaved people who haunt the Woodsman plantation, unfurling a fateful night when the friends trespassed on the plantation ruins and Jesse was suspected of murder after the body of a white man was found nearby. A decade later, Celine invites Mira to Celine’s wedding at the renovated plantation, which has been turned into a resort and tourist attraction, defending her choice against Mira’s objections: “It hasn’t been a plantation for over a hundred years, and it’s not like my family owned slaves.” But many of the guests’ ancestors did, which doesn’t bode well for them on the ghosts’ turf. Readers might lose their suspension of disbelief at certain supernatural moments, but McQueen does a good job balancing the various timelines to show how a place can be haunted by living history. This leaves readers with much to consider. Agent: Monika Woods, Triangle House Literary Agency.

August 1, 2021
Mira returns to her small hometown for her childhood best friend Celine's wedding after ten years of living away. She's nervous to reconnect with their friend Jesse, who she's always secretly loved. Celine's wedding is being held at the newly renovated Woodsman Plantation, which has an eerie, ghostly history of the enslaved who once worked the land. Mira now confronts the haunted, life-altering experience she and Jesse experienced as kids on the plantation, and questions whether Celine chose the location out of racist motives. From the moment Mira arrives, the spirits lead her on a journey to understand how she is connected to the land through her ancestors. While the ghosts guide Mira, other attendees of the wedding experience their wrath. McQueen writes with rich understanding of the spine-chilling violence Black people have experienced from slavery down throughout generations, often leading many on a journey of self-discovery of their own. She writes layered characters who deal with elitism, trust, social class, and a strong desire to be seen and understood.

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