White Flight by Peter O’Keefe
Uncomfotably Dark Horror (October 2025)
Reviewed by Elizabeth Broadbent
Everyone loves a good haunted house story. Make it short and quick, throw in some serious tension, stir in a few vivid characters, add a dose of disorientation — you’ve probably got a hit. Peter O’Keefe does this one better in White Flight, out October 21 from Uncomfortably Dark. His fast-paced, nail-biting little gothic novella delivers something unexpected: a seriously squirm-worthy look at American racism.
Willow and Joel Ward are in the process of moving out. Since their teenage daughter D passed away, their house — always rife with unsettling occurrences — has ramped up its paranormal activity. Located in what realtors would call “an up and coming neighborhood,” the house was once owned by a Black family, but weathered abandonment, squatters, and worse before they picked it up for a song. After the tragedy the Wards have endured, they’re deadset on getting out.
In the best way, this is a withholding little novella — imagine a cat you’re desperate to lure into your lap. The less you know, the better, but here’s the hook: Willow and Joel are white. They adopted D as an infant. She was Black. The book takes place against a backdrop of town-wide racial tension.
This book hurts.
Very few white authors bother to examine America’s brutal racial fissure; it’s painful as well as hard to do without degenerating into didactism. But works that manage an honest look at white privilege inevitably arrive at a singular conclusion: Many white people don’t bother to try, and even those who attempt to reconcile racial schisms inevitably fail. Regardless of intention, their failures become cringe-worthy, catastrophic blunders which perpetuate systemic violence. Moreover, that violence damages both those who enact it and the minorities they hurt.
O’Keefe nails that sentiment in this fast-paced novella, which takes place over only a few hours. Through flashbacks, he examines the motivations, compromises, and wincingly awful rationalizations a white couple makes when they decide they’re fit to raise a Black child. The Wards try; that trying only perpetuates violence.
However, spotlighting the unflinching social commentary in White Flight risks obscuring the very real heart of this novel. Amid its lingering questions about racism, the novella is simply a great haunted house story — tense, wickedly paced, and intricately plotted. Pay attention; the book’s brutal climax is well-seeded.
Best of all, O’Keefe never hands out easy answers — for the racism or the plot points. The worst horrors remain unknowable and beyond our grasp. White Flight is a bundle of raw nerves, and its main characters may be radically unlikeable, but we keep reading because they’re understandable. They’re familiar. After the madness O’Keefe sets up, their conclusion feels not only apt, but inevitable.
White Flight is a fast read that gives a necessary perspective on our current political moment. A tense, hair-raising read, it shines with gorgeous prose that only emphasizes urgency of its message. A much-needed story, and well-told.
