The Curse of Hester Gardens by Tamika Thompson
Erewhon Books (March 31, 2026)
Reviewed by Elizabeth Broadbent
Tamika Thompson’s The Curse of Hester Gardens is an urgent novel. Set in the Michigan projects, it’s a novel about gun violence, and if you suspect that makes for a rough emotional ride, you’d be right. It’s a novel about poverty, and it’s a novel about racism.
The Curse of Hester Gardens is a novel about America.
The book begins as Nona’s son Marcus is graduating high school. Headed to the Ivy Leagues, he’s finally leaving Hester Gardens, the projects that have already killed his older brother. Nona’s husband is imprisoned; her middle schooler Lance is slipping away from her, and while she clings to her Christianity, she’s also sliding into an emotional affair with her pastor.
But Hester Gardens is cursed, haunted by the souls who have been killed by violence, and it won’t let superstar Marcus get away easily. After he gets in a fight at his own graduation party, Nona begins to suspect that something’s wrong between him and gang member Peter, who may have had something to do with the death of her oldest son. She wonders if she’s cursed, though her husband always brushed it off, saying that of course Black Americans are cursed by systems of oppression designed to keep them poor and disenfranchised. But Nona thinks there’s more to it. As her life spirals out of control, she finds out which of them is correct.
As a white American with a lower middle class upbringing, I was unfamiliar with the setting of this novel, and I found it one of the real strengths of this novel. Its setting is vivid and well-realized; for those of us who didn’t grow up in an impoverished housing project, we’ll find it immersive in a way that won’t feel voyeuristic, and that’s a true strength in Hester Gardens. Thompson gives us music, scents, images — everything from popsicles dripping down chins to unjust landlord rules to fears of alleys to memories of check cashing places. It’s the quotidian details of a place that make it real and vivid. You can’t wear your good clothes on the bus. God is good — all the time. I opened this book as a stranger and walked away feeling like I knew this place.
This setting is peopled with vivid, interesting, and relatable characters. Nona’s loss of her son is gutting and visceral; the hope, strife, and dreams of Hester Gardens residents is palpable. You know these people: Nona, the grieving mother. The creepy/desperate pastor who’s both shady and also generous, the way Nona needs him and also doesn’t need him. Mother Lincoln, the mother she needs and also resents. Peter, the child she loved and the teenager she loathes. Her son Lance, the child she yearns for and the young teen she no longer connects to and doesn’t understand. You know them all.
Lately, there’s a lot of discourse online about how white readers “can’t relate” to Black characters. Which is a lot of nonsense — are they unempathetic or incurious? This is a novel that needs to be read, for a lot of reasons, but we’ll start with that one. Thompson does character and emotion so well that you can’t help but be moved.
Moreover, this is an urgent novel because it tackles the plague of gun violence. Why is it our American curse? What kind of suffering does it cause? Why does it continue, and what can we do about it? Thompson has at least some answers to those questions, or as much as anyone can answer them. They hurt. They aren’t easy to look at. Like all the best horror, The Curse of Hester Gardens is a hard book to read for all the right reasons. An important novel, and a must-read.
