Synopsis
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 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.
Review
A huge thank you to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing for the eARC!
A standout debut, Del Sandeen’s atmospheric novel, This Cursed House, manages to expertly encapsulate all things hauntingly Gothic. The year is 1962, and Jemma Barker finds herself taking a job in New Orleans as what she believes to be a tutor for the Duchon family. However, her arrival from Chicago proves to be a little more than she bargained for; the South in the 1960s looks much different, the heat is oppressive, and the Duchon family is peculiar, to say the least. As secrets are revealed, Jemma soon realizes the unfathomable truth of the Duchon family, and her role in their plight to break a years-long curse. Jemma’s story is one that is drenched in mystery, darkness, and intrigue, one that will linger long after the last page is turned.
This Cursed House is a novel that nails so many themes and feelings in ways that feel markedly natural to Jemma’s reckoning with the Duchon family. Most obvious of all is the setting of this story, 1960s New Orleans, a time and place marked by the struggle for equality and the end of segregation. New Orleans has always been home to ghostly tales of haunted houses and restless spirits, but Jemma’s circumstances within the Duchon home mirror that of the Civil Rights movement occurring in the city and, to some degree, within the confines of the Duchon’s isolated domain. Sandeen writes the members of the Duchon family with a flair of elitism given their lighter skin tone and their wicked attitude towards Jemma. There’s a great deal of inequality, a large amount of rage-inducing behavior, from the Duchons that adds to the simmering tension and wickedness of the already claustrophobic atmosphere crafted by Sandeen.
Perhaps most startling of all is the nature by which every page of this novel seems to reveal a deeper, darker secret. The sins of the past have festered long enough for the Duchon family, and we are privy to these reveals laced with drama right alongside Jemma. From the very first page, Sandeen’s writing instills a connection between the reader and Jemma, making these staggering secrets land with a notable punch. This also lends itself to making this a hard-to-put-down story with every death, every injury, and every misdeed ramping the stakes higher and higher.
Above all, This Cursed House is a story of reckoning, a tale drenched in moody atmosphere to deliver a unique environment for curses, ghosts, and the like to play freely. These various elements combine to deliver a meaningful message of atonement, of taking a look into the harsh mirror of the past and coming to terms with the damage done. Del Sandeen writes this story with ghosts and curses, but the true horrors can be attributed to very human hands, to the misdeeds of family, and to the rotten secrets of the past.
This Cursed House by Del Sandeen is on shelves NOW from Berkley Publishing!
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