Gloom Town, by Ronald L. Smith

Gloom Town, by Ronald L. Smith

The town was called Gloom, which was a strange name for a town, but if you ever found yourself there, you would certainly see why. Some said that merchant sailors gave it the name long ago, when they pulled their ships into the harbor only to be met by wind, rain, and very little sunlight.

But that’s an old tale, and no one knows for sure anymore.

—Gloom Town, by Ronald L. Smith

Like most of the other residents in Gloom, twelve-year-old Rory Sorenson and his mother are just scraping by. Rory’s mom works two jobs and they live in one of the poorest parts of town, but the spectre of homelessness is always hanging over their heads… especially when their straight-out-of Dickens landlord, Mr. Bumbailiff, comes around.

Rory wants to contribute more—he knows how hard his mother works, and it breaks his heart to see how tired and sad she is—so when he sees a job posted for a Gentleman’s Valet, he jumps at the chance… even though it’s at Foxglove Manor, the creepiest house in town:

Rory took a deep breath and reached for the door knocker. He shivered. It was a gruesome, leering face, the tongue being the knocker itself. He picked it up and let it fall, sending an echo down the block and back again.

I love the detail of the house being named for a massively poisonous plant.

In Gloom Town, Smith tells a dark, fantastical, and genuinely scary adventure story, but grounds it in the realism of real life—Rory wants to solve (and survive!) the mystery at Foxglove Manor, sure, but he’s also trying to solve real life problems and deal with real life emotions.

Even though he loves and knows he is loved, he’s dealing with feelings about BELONGING—he stands out in crowds because his skin is darker than most of the other people in Gloom, including his mother. In the rare event that he sees other people who look more like him, he feels both curious and isolated. When he asks questions, his mother tells him he looks like his father and drops the subject. And he’s also dealing with feelings of LONGING, in that he yearns to travel away from Gloom, to see the world, and to have adventures like his possibly-mythological folk hero Goldenrod, a sea captain who is said to have black skin and golden hair.

There’s realism in the world-building, too. As the story unfolds, we get to see how Gloom itself is under a spell of sorts, and how living in oppressive circumstances—in this case, economic, but also atmospheric in every sense of the term—leads to people forgetting normalcy, forgetting that things can be different, can be BETTER. It shows how much work it takes to keep hope alive. Which are all things that, again, are very real, and I suspect a lot of readers will be able to relate to.

There’s realism in terms of the villains, who, like Bluebeard, set up a system that’s rigged to make their marks fail; who lean on an unfair bureaucratic tangle to take advantage of honorable people; who are middlemen between the True Power and the regular folks. And there’s realism in terms of the adventure—Rory stumbles into a situation that requires him to fight great evil, but it’s a situation that’s been going on much longer than he’s even been alive. He doesn’t have all the information—it isn’t until it’s almost all over that he gets some Helpful Exposition—and goes all in to fight great evil anyway. Because he wants to survive, yes, but also because it’s the Right Thing To Do.

It shows joy and color and hope as power; it shows friendship and chosen family as a source of strength, of how knowing that you have people in your life who you love and who love—knowing that you’re not alone—you helps to make you brave.

Gloom Town is due out on February 11—quotes here are from a review copy, and are thus subject to change.