Randy’s latest review on our Countdown to Halloween is a recent Award winner:
“I wasn’t gonna say anything to you kids – but there’s bodies buried over on that land across the street, out beyond Tobacco Road. McCormack’s land. They found an old burial site, the bones of people who lived ‘round here a hundred years ago. And not a cemetery neither – this has been McCormack land for generations. …”
It was the coolest thing Grandma had ever said.
Every summer Davie and his little sister, Neema, visit their father’s parents in Gracetown, Florida. This summer is different, though. Their older sister, Imani, is visiting the college she’ll start at in the Fall, and there’s tension between dad and mom, who has gone to visit her parents in Ghana. Then there are the ghosts. Summer in Gracetown is when the young see ghosts; Davie is twelve and this may be his last chance.
Dad is preoccupied with his failing marriage and his filmmaking, Grandpa is more distracted by arthritis than in past years, and Grandma is obsessed with stopping the development of the McCormack land where the bodies were found. The bodies of black men, probably slaves or not long freed men, on the land of a slave-owner and still owned by his family. There’s unrecorded history there, and grandma aims to preserve it. So, naturally, the grown-ups have no time or belief in ghosts. But Davie and Neema do, and when Davie sees three boys in the nearby woods, and hears a dog snuffling in the hallway outside his bedroom, even though his grandparents don’t own a dog, he’s ready for ghost hunting.
What could have been heavy drama or, worse, pedantry, is subverted by an underlying sense of adventure in Davie’s mission and humor in Due’s presentation of it, while still drawing strength from Due’s ability to weave together the South’s history with a strong family story, and really two family stories since she also presents the last days of the Timmons’ boys, whose disappearance has been a weight and blight on Gracetown for a century. Her light-handed approach captures a twelve-year-old boy’s voice believably, showing his dawning realization of his family’s troubles and his determination to see ghosts and then, once he’s seen them, to understand their story: That’s why there are ghosts, Davie realizes, so their story gets told.
Presented in scenes that move quickly while providing some sense of Gracetown’s past, surroundings and people – besides the scenes in which Davie first sees the ghosts and sections following the Timmons’ boys, Davie’s meeting with a local librarian is a key moment – “Ghost Summer” mixes some of the family warmth found in To Kill a Mockingbird with a bit of myth-making and wraps it in a strong ghost story, all the more powerful for dramatizing Southern history but also quietly subverting some of the attitudes and beliefs grown from local history with the truth of the Timmons’ boys disappearance.
Ghost Summer includes two other stories set in Gracetown, “The Lake” and “Summer,” the former truly a horror story demonstrating why one does not swim in the lakes of Gracetown in the summer, and the latter depicting a young mother’s reaction to the possible demonic possession of her toddler; these are fine lead-ins to the novella, each referring to the central event powering “Ghost Summer,” the discovery of bodies buried on McCormack land. I would gladly read a collection of nothing but Gracetown stories.
Besides ghosts and possession, stories in the collection tackle precognition, creatures, werewolves, zombies and pandemic, some leaning more towards SF than horror. In each (including one co-written by her husband, SF writer, Steven Barnes) Due makes the subject fresh by not sparing her characters pain and by viewing them with empathy for their plight. She is especially good at revealing the strength and vulnerability of the very young, and the loneliness of the other, be the other an African-American, a werewolf or a young girl knowing she lives under a death sentence. And Due’s prose is graceful, often with an unexpected turn of phrase, simile or metaphor.
This is the first I’ve read of Due, so it’s probably too soon to say, but the sensibility behind these stories didn’t remind me of any horror writers I’ve read, but did remind me of two SF writers, Edgar Pangborn and, in some of his writing, Theodore Sturgeon, both of whom seemed able to inhabit their characters and empathize with their flaws as well as their strengths.
For anyone inclined to read something because of my recommendation, I would put this collection near the top of this year’s list for seeking out.
Possible companion reads for “Ghost Summer”
“Longtooth” by Edgar Pangborn
“The Professor’s Teddy Bear” by Theodore Sturgeon
“The Reach” by Stephen King
“Struwwelpeter” & “Mr. Dark’s Carnival” by Glen Hirshberg
“Conversations in a Dead Language by Thomas Ligotti
“GHOST SUMMER” by Tananarive Due (2008; Ghost Summer: Stories, Prime Books, 2015, winner of 2016 British Fantasy Award for best collection)
