Today’s Countdown to Hallowe’en review is of a fairly recent novel from someone whose short stories Randy has really liked in the past.
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When you have reached a place of spirits, your bones know it.
You feel their company in the gentle call of the wind, in the laughter of the creek, in the silent conversation of the trees.
….
Such was my feeling upon reaching Sacajawea, upon finding the Place.
— Marie, From The Good House
Angela Toussaint, daughter of Dominique Toussaint, granddaughter of Marie Toussaint, returns to Good House. Known as the Good House partly because it was originally built by Elijah Goode, the town pharmacist, and bequeathed by him to his housekeeper and later business partner, Marie, it also became a haven for other townspeople in the wake of a mudslide that destroyed most of the rest of the town. Though initially resistant to a black woman owning the most beautiful house in town, Marie’s aide was rewarded by the townspeople mostly overcoming their prejudices.
But Marie is dead, Dominique – Angela’s troubled mother – has been dead even longer, and the last time Angela stayed at the Good House, Corey died. Corey was her teenage son. Now Angela has unfinished business at Good House in Sacajawea, Washington. She intends to sell the house her son committed suicide in. But she comes with misgivings and the feel of the house, though welcoming is offset by something threatening, something she doesn’t understand, something her grandmother Marie would have understood, a presence powerful and vengeful against the Toussaint family.
In her efforts to help the townspeople a father had brought Marie his suffering daughter and she had found a way to help, not with medicine, but by driving out of the girl the demon possessing her. But Marie knew something went wrong, and though she paid for it when her daughter was taken ill, there may yet be tolls for a later generation.
Due mentions Stephen King more than once, referring directly to both The Stand and Pet Sematary. I haven’t read the former, but I can see some of the latter in the handling of the novel’s materials, and more generally the King-like depiction of how the community around the Good House is affected by and drawn into Marie’s troubles. But Due makes it all her own, the history of Sacajawea, Washington (like Derry, Maine, not a real place) with its racial divides and its movement toward acceptance, perhaps optimistic but still engaging and believably depicted.
The Good House is a haunted house/place story with the twist of the haunting stemming from a source other than strictly Judeo-Christian, though the source of the possession traces to the sins – or at least the errors – of the elders being visited on their descendants. The haunted house story has strong antecedents like A Turn of the Screw, The Shining and The Haunting of Hill House which have set the bar high. While I would not judge this novel as hurdling that bar, it is a well-planned and well-executed work along the lines of King’s work, showing like his stories do an awareness of how one’s present is affected by one’s past, and the past of one’s family and community. But Due adds to the mix the complications attendant on race and while not disregarding the social weight of racism there is an optimism implicit in the community’s admiration of the Toussaint family over generations.
If you’re interested in sampling Due’s work, along with The Good House I’d suggest the collection, Ghost Summer: Stories, which I read back in 2016 and greatly enjoyed. The title story in particular would match well with a reading of this novel.
THE GOOD HOUSE by Tananarive Due
Washington Square Press, 2004
496 pages
ISBN: 978-0743449014
Review by Randy Money
