When the reckoning comes

First Title Value for Searching:

Personal Author:

McQueen, LaTanya

Edition:

First edition.

Physical Description:

237 pages ; 21 cm.

Genre:

Ghost stories.

Horror fiction.

Summary:

"More than a decade ago, Mira fled her small, segregated hometown in the south to forget. With every mile she traveled, she distanced herself from her past: from her best friend Celine, mocked by their town as the only white girl with black friends; from her old neighborhood; from the eerie Woodsman plantation rumored to be haunted by the spirits of slaves; from the terrifying memory of a ghost she saw that terrible day when a dare-gone-wrong almost got Jesse- the boy she secretly loved- arrested for murder. But now Mira is back in Kipsen to attend Celine's wedding at the plantation, which has been transformed into a lush vacation resort. Mira hopes to reconnect with her friends, and especially, Jesse, to finally tell him the truth about her feelings and the events of that devastating long-ago day. But for all its fancy renovations, the Woodsman remains a monument to its oppressive racist history. The bar serves antebellum drinks, entertainments include horrifying reenactments, and the service staff is nearly all black. Yet the darkest elements of the plantation's past have been carefully erased- rumors that slaves were tortured mercilessly and that ghosts roam the lands, seeking vengeance on the descendants of those who tormented them, which includes most of the wedding guests. As the weekend unfolds, Mira, Jesse, and Celine are forced to acknowledge their history together, and to save themselves from what is to come." --publisher's website.

Subject Term:

African American women -- Fiction

Weddings -- Fiction.

Plantations -- North Carolina -- Fiction.

Haunted places -- Fiction.

Slavery -- United States -- Fiction

Revenge -- Fiction

African Americans -- Fiction.

Paranormal fiction

Horror tales

Publication Info:

New York, N.Y. : HarperCollins [2021]

Subject:

African American women -- Fiction

Weddings -- Fiction.

Plantations -- North Carolina -- Fiction.

Haunted places -- Fiction.

Slavery -- United States -- Fiction

Revenge -- Fiction

African Americans -- Fiction.

Paranormal fiction

Horror tales

Ghost stories.

Horror fiction.

Haunted localities

Localities, Haunted

Places, Haunted

African Americans -- United States

Afro-Americans

Black Americans

Colored people (United States)

Negroes

Occult fiction

Occult stories

Occultism -- Fiction

Occultism -- Juvenile fiction

Paranormal stories

Parapsychology -- Fiction

Parapsychology -- Juvenile fiction

Supernatural -- Fiction

Supernatural -- Juvenile fiction

Witchcraft -- Fiction

Witchcraft -- Juvenile fiction

Horror -- Fiction

Horror -- Juvenile fiction

Horror fiction

Horror stories

Horror tales -- Fiction

Horror tales -- Juvenile fiction

Scary stories

Scary tales

Tales, Horror

Terror -- Fiction

Terror -- Juvenile fiction

Terror tales

SAILS ISBN:

9780063035041

Available:

Library	Shelf Number	Shelf Location	Status
Searching... Dighton Public Library	MCQ	FICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Fall River Main	FIC MCQ	Stacks	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Foxboro - Boyden Library	FIC MCQUEEN	FICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Mansfield Public Library	FIC MCQUEEN	FICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... New Bedford Francis J. Lawler Branch	FIC MCQUEEN	FICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Seekonk Public Library	FIC MCQUEEN	FICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Taunton Public Library	MCQUEEN, LATANYA	1ST FLOOR STACKS	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

"LaTanya McQueen's When The Reckoning Comes is so deliciously uncomfortable there were moments where I had to put the book down, take a deep breath, and like Mira, its protagonist, urge myself to go further. This is a novel, like Octavia Butler's Kindred, that reminds its readers that as long as people don't acknowledge how much of the past still shapes the present, it will bring its whips, its hatchets, and fists to make us learn." -- Megan Giddings, author of Lakewood

A haunting novel about a black woman who returns to her hometown for a plantation wedding and the horror that ensues as she reconnects with the blood-soaked history of the land and the best friends she left behind.

More than a decade ago, Mira fled her small, segregated hometown in the south to forget. With every mile she traveled, she distanced herself from her past: from her best friend Celine, mocked by their town as the only white girl with black friends; from her old neighborhood; from the eerie Woodsman plantation rumored to be haunted by the spirits of slaves; from the terrifying memory of a ghost she saw that terrible day when a dare-gone-wrong almost got Jesse--the boy she secretly loved--arrested for murder.

But now Mira is back in Kipsen to attend Celine's wedding at the plantation, which has been transformed into a lush vacation resort. Mira hopes to reconnect with her friends, and especially, Jesse, to finally tell him the truth about her feelings and the events of that devastating long-ago day.

But for all its fancy renovations, the Woodsman remains a monument to its oppressive racist history. The bar serves antebellum drinks, entertainment includes horrifying reenactments, and the service staff is nearly all black. Yet the darkest elements of the plantation's past have been carefully erased--rumors that slaves were tortured mercilessly and that ghosts roam the lands, seeking vengeance on the descendants of those who tormented them, which includes most of the wedding guests.

As the weekend unfolds, Mira, Jesse, and Celine are forced to acknowledge their history together, and to save themselves from what is to come.

Reviews (4)

Publisher's Weekly Review

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. (Aug.)

Kirkus Review

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. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Booklist Review

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.

Library Journal Review

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.