Haley Newlin’s Reviews > The Curse of Hester Gardens > Status Update

“At dawn, she snapped.”

“The devil will come for you if you don’t hunt him down first.”

Sgt. Prager tells Nona what they found at the high school. Took my breath away

“In the hierarchy of grief, nothing touched the pain a mother carried…for the first few months, a baby believed it was still attached to its mother, that it was part of her body. For the mother, that feeling continued for the remainder of her life.”

God, this hurts

At twenty, Kiki was “at an age when Black women were prey to everyone. No one but her family would care if she went missing, and if something happened to her, she’d be blamed.

What was she doing out all alone at night? Where were her people? She was probably up to no good anyway.”

Harlan says Hester Gardens, the trauma, the lack of resources and investment, has a feeling to go along with it

“A feeling of hopelessness, despair, worthlessness, sadness, and sometimes, the anger is just a way to hide the hurt”

“My grief’s like a straitjacket. Can’t take it off, and it’s hard to move around with it on.”

Can the spirits of Hester Gardens possess tenants like Marcus?

Nona suspects something is possessing her son

“We are always in danger.”

“Our country is nefarious. It has a place for Black people, particularly Black men. They never intended for us to be citizens. They never intended for us to be American. We were meant to work to enrich them, and if we’re not working to enrich them, they really want us in prison or in the ground.”