This Cursed House - SFBA Book Club

English language

Published 2024 by Penguin Publishing Group.

ISBN:: 978-0-593-63952-8

(2 reviews)

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 …

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.

3 editions

Annie the Book reviewed This Cursed House by Del Sandeen

This Cursed House, by Del Sandeen

4 stars

Three hundred dollars a week is a lot of money in 1962. So much so, in fact, that it tempts Jemma Barker from the relative safety of Chicago to New Orleans, where Jim Crow is violently enforced. She should have known that the money was too good to be true. In Del Sandeen’s original and chilling novel, This Cursed House, Jemma quickly learns that three hundred dollars a week is far too little to compensate her for dealing with the Duchon family...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.

Annie the Book

rated it

Sept. 26, 2024

Subjects

American literature