Mazywood
by Tananarive Due
Reviewed by Galen Strickland
Posted September 27, 2026
Buy from Bookshop or Amazon. A purchase through our links may earn us a commission.
There are several elements in this novel that Due has used in previous stories, beginning with the fictional Gracetown, Florida, where Mazelle Washington lives. The year is 1926, and Mazelle is seven years old. Her parents, brother, and her twin sisters, had toured and performed in shows for black audiences, but that had become harder to do after Mazelle was born, along with all the other hazards of being black in many areas of the country. Mazelle had wanted to perform too, but did not have the opportunity until…she visits the nearby Wishing Pool. She had always been told to be careful what she wished for, and a family friend had said the wish had to be very specific, not leaving out any details, or else the wish could backfire. Also, not to actually touch the pool, not even one toe.
"The Wishing Pool" (a different one) is the title story of Due's second collection, which also includes a section titled Gracetown Stories, plus another story is directly tied to this novel. More on that later. After making her wish, but also wondering if she had accidentally been too close and let her shoe touch the water, Mazelle is surprised to see a friendly dog on the road as she walks back home. Her wish was to have a best friend who would always be with her, forever. She names the dog Scout, and quickly learns the dog responds to whatever she says, and sometimes just what she is thinking. He can stand on his hind legs to dance with her, and also does backflips, which is one of Mazelle's talents too, along with tap dancing. When she gets home she puts on a show for her family, which prompts them to contact a producer scouting locations for his latest film. That producer is not in need of a young black girl, but tells them about Jerry Lorenzo, who might be interested in using Mazelle and Scout for a children's film series, Li'l Gumshoes. Mazelle would be the only black child on the show, which would be Lorenzo's attempt to compete with Hal Roach's Our Gang comedies. Her mother negotiates a very lucrative contract, which enables them to move to Los Angeles.
Little Mazy and Scout the Wonder Dog become the centerpiece of Li'l Gumshoes, which was about a group of kids trying to solve mysteries. While popular it never eclipsed Our Gang. It was still the silent era when the film series started, but then along comes sound, so everyone wonders who can make that transition. The point became moot for Mazelle when Scout disappears, and she wondered if he had picked up on the fact she was disillusioned with Lorenzo and wanted to do something different. Shortly afterwards, all of the show's reels were lost in a fire at Lorenzo Studios, although many who had seen them remembered Mazy. The money her family had saved from her salary didn't last long, her mother becoming a teacher, while her father was limited by a severe back injury. That is when the second narrative track begins. Johnnie Washington is Mazelle's only grandchild. He is a screenwriter, producer, and director of several low budget horror films, but hasn't gotten the big break he has hoped for. His wife Tasha is a professor at UCLA, needing to "publish or perish," hopeful of chronicling Mazelle's life. They have two daughters. Sharise is seventeen, and would be starting college the following year; Imani is thirteen. Johnnie's latest script has languished at a studio that had requested numerous rewrites. He decides it is time to get out of town for a while, to unwind and reaccess their situation, so he suggests they go to Bear Creek Lodge, the small resort Mazelle had built on the slopes of Mount Shasta. In the earlier novelette, "Incident at Bear Creek Lodge," it was set in Colorado. That was the first time Johnnie had been there, when he was thirteen, with the second time a few years later when Mazelle was on her death bed.
I would recommend anyone intersted in Mazywood to read that story first, although some of the things that happen in it are referenced in the novel. The reason Mazelle had been able to afford the resort was she later worked with Jerry Lorenzo again on a series of comedic films, portraying the maid Lazy Mazy. Yet Lorenzo had hooked her into a contract with the prospect of her starring in a film titled Reaper. The script was magnificent, but she later learned Jerry didn't have the rights, and that several other black actresses were vying for it too, including Lena Horne and Dorothy Dandridge, both of whom had much lighter skin than Mazelle. Before that, she had worked as an extra on Gone With the Wind, where she met and became friends with Hattie McDaniel and Butterfly McQueen, as well as Clark Gable. One of the reasons Johnnie wanted to go to Bear Creek when he was thirteen is he heard Diahann Carroll might be visiting, an actress he had a crush on from the TV show "Julia." Unfortunately, Diahann was not there, having been called back to reshoot scenes for the movie Claudine. He did get to meet former heavyweight champion Joe Louis though, plus an opera singer he wasn't familiar with, her name not mentioned. His daughters didn't know much about their great-grandmother, but were anxious to go when they learned the lodge had its own ski trail. Imani in particular had fell in love with snowboarding. It is clear Johnnie had either forgotten his earlier experience at the lodge, or perhaps had decided what he thought he remembered might have been a bad dream. It wasn't.
Enough synopsis. Due obviously researched early Hollywood, including the black experience there through all the years. She has written TV scripts, one for the latest Twilight Zone reboot, and she and her husband Steven Barnes have adapted their graphic novel Keeper into a short film, and are hoping to expand that to feature length. She is friends with Jordan Peele, and teaches a class at UCLA focusing on black horror films, particularly Peele's Get Out. The novel features scenes of sympathetic black family life (mostly), along with some very horrific events. The notion that there was a supernatural aspect to Scout was just hinted at, but then there was the more frightening entity haunting Bear Creek Lodge, which Mazelle had orignally dubbed Mazywood, then changed her mind due to her bad memories of being Lazy Mazy. There are things mentioned about black actors/actresses that I may have heard before then forgot, including one about Sammy Davis Jr., which a Wikipedia article confirms. Mazelle is fiction, but the world she lived in was real, very difficult for blacks to navigate. Johnnie was still living through that difficulty. No matter what advances had been made, it was still a problem. One step forward, two steps back. If not three steps back. The Washington family has to deal with a horrific situation at Bear Creek, a dilemma that tasks all of their strength and fortitude. It is somewhat a "the sins of the [grandmother] are visited on the [grandson]" ordeal. Luckily, aided by a ghost of another relative.
Mazelle is sympathetic up to a point, but you may grow to hate her as Johnnie did. There were two things I guessed correctly, although not for another, but that did not diminish my anticipation and anxiety about the outcome. Because of her interest in horror films, I would be surprised if Due has not at least started on a screenplay for this, and if that ever happens I will see it. The book is highly recommended, and that is coming from someone for whom horror is not a favorite genre. I do like tense thrillers, which this is as well, and a movie (or miniseries) would likely feature the requisite jump scares. Read the book, since even if a film happens, Due might have as much difficulty getting her vision on screen as Johnnie experienced.
We would appreciate your support for this site with your purchases from Amazon.com, Bookshop.org, and ReAnimusPress.
