When the Reckoning Comes by LaTanya McQueen
This is a short novel, but it packs a wallop. When the Reckoning Comes takes place in a small Southern town where Mia has returned reluctantly to attend her childhood best friend's wedding. Mia had escaped Kipsen ten years before, along with the horrifying memory of a trip to Woodsman, an abandoned plantation deep in the woods. Mia doesn't want to return but Celine, her only white friend growing up, calls and begs her to attend. Celine, Mia, and Jesse all grew up poor and on the outs with the kids of Kipsen. Celine and Jesse stayed, and now Celine is marrying a rich man at the newly renovated Woodsman plantation. Mia arrives, and is horrified by what she sees at the plantation: all black servers, reenactments of slave labor, and a basic white-washing of all the terrible history of Woodsman Plantation. Rumors of ghosts of the slaves still abound, and it's definitely a place that looks beautiful but is rotten at the core. There have been a ...