A review by belly_puncher
The Good House by Tananarive Due

4.0

This is a new author to me and I immensely enjoyed this book - although the content can be rough at times death of multiple children, murder, violence against women, and more, all of these acts played a role and were not lingered on.

This multi-generational story begins when the matriarch fleas Louisiana after her husband is killed by racists. She and her daughter make their way to a fictional town in the Pacific Northwest where they are the only black family in town. Due is a black women residing in a small white community of the Pacific Northwest and her descriptions in the novel of this experience are profound. The evilness of racism persists as a subtle theme throughout the novel, but the focus of the story is the matriarch's great grandson's rediscovery of his family's reliance on intuition and their practice of voudou. What is interesting to me in the novel is the very realistic plurality of belief - for example practicing voudou and simultaneously having a strong commitment to God.

Anyways I found this book to be a gory page turner with a lot of ancillary ideas and themes to process. Looking forward to reading more by Due.