latanya mcqueen when the reckoning comes

The bar serves antebellum drinks, entertainment includes horrifying reenactments, and the service staff is nearly all black. 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.īut for all its fancy renovations, the Woodsman remains a monument to its oppressive racist history. 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.īut now Mira is back in Kipsen to attend Celine’s wedding at the plantation, which has been transformed into a lush vacation resort. More than a decade ago, Mira fled her small, segregated hometown in the south to forget. 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 LakewoodĪ 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.

'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.

Latanya mcqueen when the reckoning comes