Some houses are haunted by ghosts, some are affected by ghosts. Del Sandeen doubles the horrific in This Cursed House, her debut novel. Set in 1962 a down-on-her-luck Jemma Barker takes a job she can’t refuse, because $300 a week is an impressive salary in 1962, especially when you are a young black woman. Of course, she realizes too late she didn’t read the fine print and because she was so focused on the weekly pay.
In this Southern gothic horror debut, a young Black woman abandons her life in 1960s Chicago for a position with a mysterious family in New Orleans, only to discover the dark truth: They’re under a curse, and they think she can break it.
In the fall of 1962, twenty-seven-year-old Jemma Barker is desperate to escape her life in Chicago—and the spirits she has always been able to see. When she receives an unexpected job offer from the Duchon family in New Orleans, she accepts, thinking it is her chance to start over.
But Jemma discovers that the Duchon family isn’t what it seems. Light enough to pass as white, the Black family members look down on brown-skinned Jemma. Their tenuous hold on reality extends to all the members of their eccentric clan, from haughty grandmother Honorine to beautiful yet inscrutable cousin Fosette. And soon the shocking truth comes out: The Duchons are under a curse. And they think Jemma has the power to break it.
As Jemma wrestles with the gift she’s run from all her life, she unravels deeper and more disturbing secrets about the mysterious Duchons. Secrets that stretch back over a century. Secrets that bind her to their fate if she fails.
Off to New Orleans Jemma goes. Her employees are the Duchon family, but her assumption that she’s going to be a teacher for a member of that family is broken when they tell her the true nature of her job: break the curse that keeps the family stuck in their house. Jemma can see ghosts, so she thinks she can help since she has some supernatural proclivities. Also, $300 per week.
The family is very structured, the grandmother has an extremely rigid view of how to do things. There’s also the fact that Jemma is a dark/brown-skinned black woman and the Duchons are light-skinned to the point that they could almost pass for white. This is a point of contention throughout the novel between Jemma and the entire family and one of the many reasons the Duchons are nasty towards Jemma. While they are indeed nasty and unlikeable, Sandeen was able to make them fascinating enough antagonists for Jemma that I kept reading, I was genuinely curious about the root of their nastiness.
It isn’t long before Jemma starts to see and hear the ghosts who are bound to the Duchon home. Some plead with her, many confuse her at least initially. But what else is a haunted house story, a gothic horror without secrets? There is so much important information withheld from Jemma that she is forced to investigate many things on her own. When she finds the truth and brings it to the Duchons, they scorn her even more. So yeah, maybe the emotion that flavors this novel the most is anger. Between the secrets Jemma knows exist in the general sense and the ghosts who exist in the spiritual sense, Sandeen builds an incredible amount of tension throughout the entirety of the novel.
While the Duchons were, to put it mildly, rather miserable, some of the other supporting characters helped to brighten Jemma’s days in New Orleans. A woman named Magdeline, a former employee/acquaintance of the Duchons is Jemma’s one true confidant. Even Magdeline speaks in hints and indirectness. She, at least, was trying to help Jemma.
My only minor criticism is that the book felt a little drawn out through the third quarter of the book. The finale was earned and well-wrought. All the character building and story in the first two quarters were great.
Sandeen has crafted an extremely impressive debut with This Cursed House. She touches on colorism, which is a form of racism that doesn’t seem to get quite the “attention” of “feature” in fiction/horror fiction. At least that I’ve come across when compared to the racism I’ve encountered in fiction. Most protagonists in these kinds of haunting stories themselves have a mysterious or haunted past and Jemma fits that mold perfectly, but still felt fresh and unique. In other words, a truly engaging examination of character and identity from Sandeen.
This Cursed House is the first salvo from Sandeen and I for one hope to see more from her in the future.
Recommended
© 2024 Rob H. Bedford
Hardcover | October 2024
Berkley | 384 Pages
https://www.delsandeen.com/
Review copy courtesy of the publisher
