The Peach Seed: A Novel

by Anita Gail Jones

Overview

Fletcher Dukes and Altovise Benson reunite after decades apart—and a mountain of secrets—in this debut exploring the repercussions of a single choice and how an enduring talisman challenges and holds a family together.

On a routine trip to the Piggly Wiggly in Albany, Georgia, widower Fletcher Dukes smells a familiar perfume, then sees a tall woman the color of papershell pecans with a strawberry birthmark on the nape of her neck. He knows immediately that she is his lost love, Altovise Benson. Their bond, built on county fairs, sit-ins, and marches, once seemed a sure and forever thing. But their marriage plans were disrupted when the police turned a peaceful protest violent.

Before Altovise fled the South, Fletcher gave her a peach seed monkey with diamond eyes. As we learn via harrowing flashbacks, an enslaved ancestor on the coast of South Carolina carved the first peach seed, a talisman that, ever since, each father has gifted his son on his thirteenth birthday.

Giving one to Altovise initiated a break in tradition, irrevocably shaping the lives of generations of Dukeses. Recently, Fletcher has made do on his seven acres with his daughter Florida’s check-ins, his drop biscuits, and his faithful dog. But as he begins to reckon with long-ago choices, he finds he isn’t the only one burdened with unspoken truths.

An indelible portrait of a family, The Peach Seed explores how kin pass down legacies of sorrow, joy, and strength. And it is a parable of how a glimmer of hope as small as a seed can ripple across generations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250872043
Publisher:	Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	07/30/2024
Pages:	448
Sales rank:	1,001,643
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Anita Gail Jones is a visual artist and writer born and raised in Albany, Georgia. She is a Hedgebrook alumna, and a 2018-19 Affiliate Artist at The Headlands Center for the Arts. The Peach Seed, her debut novel, was a Novella semi-finalist in a William Faulkner-William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition, and was selected as a 2021 Top Ten Finalist in the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction.

Editorial Reviews

06/26/2023

Jones debuts with a layered saga of a Southern Black family that weaves stories of the slave trade and the 1960s civil rights movement. In 1796 Senegal, six-year-old Malik Welé begins to learn his father’s woodcarving trade and dreams of one day sailing the Atlantic. His dream turns to a nightmare when he’s abducted by two Black men and enslaved in America at age 17. In a parallel narrative set in present-day Georgia, 70-year-old Fletcher Duke encounters his long-ago lover Altovise Benson in a grocery store. Back in 1962, Fletcher and Altovise were working with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee when they were separated and jailed during an altercation with police, and never managed to reunite. Previously, Fletcher had carved Altovise a monkey from a peach seed, just like the one his father gave him as a boy. Before Jones reveals the link between the Duke family’s monkey-carving tradition and Malik, a discovery that deepens Fletcher and Altovise’s connection in the present day, she shows how Fletcher trained in workshops to protect other activists from mob and police violence while Altovise learned from the original Freedom Singers how to recast church songs into protest anthems. It’s a lot to juggle, but Jones manages to tie together the themes of ancestral heritage and the persistent power of love. This is worth a look. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

Longlisted for the Crook's Corner Book Prize

Named on the WABE Summer Reading List

Named a Georgia Center for the Book “Books All Georgians Should Read”

Essence, “15 New Books We Can’t Wait To Read This Summer”

“An epic, enchanting debut.”

—Lauren Puckett-Pope, Elle

“The sweeping story of a Black family in the South focuses on resilience and love...Jones is always insightful about family dynamics. And it’s a pleasure to see older people as main characters in a novel, depicted fully and without condescension. Engaging characters keep a complex multigenerational plot moving to embody decades of Black history.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“Jones debuts with a layered saga of a Southern Black family that weaves stories of the slave trade and the 1960s civil rights movement....[she] manages to tie together the themes of ancestral heritage and the persistent power of love.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Anita Gail Jones weaves together personal histories and the legacies that came before us in an expansive story about family and hidden histories. The world in this debut novel feels so lived in. Readers are drawn in by gorgeous passages about landscapes that dance with all five senses.”

—Debutiful

“The Peach Seed is propulsive, yet thoughtful; sweeping but intricate; a tribute to the African American experience that captures its vastness and depth. Jones is an indispensable addition to the canon of Southern literature.”

—Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, author of On The Rooftop

“Anita Gail Jones’s prodigious talents are on remarkable display in The Peach Seed. Her rendering of a fictional world, whether the exterior landscapes of Georgia and West Africa or the rich portraits of the interiors of southern homes, is truly impressive. Her dialogue resonates with clarity, compassion, and authenticity, rarely seen on the pages of fiction. She braids stories of the struggles and perseverance of African-Americans in distant centuries with those of more recent eras with remarkable dexterity, and her characters are thoroughly engrossing. This immensely well-crafted debut novel, gut-wrenching at times, hopeful at others, is a beautiful achievement.”

—Jeffrey Colvin, award-winning author of Africaville

“Shockingly beautiful. . . . Rooted in specific American places and historical tragedies, The Peach Seed dares to center the pitch-perfect voice of its narrator, a voice that is lyrical, pastoral, and dazzling with the hot light of new insights into problems as old as a nation built on slavery and freedom. The novel is the fictional equivalent of genius Black Country music—it tells the gut-bucket truth with eclipsing beauty.”

—Alice Randall, award-winning author of The Wind Done Gone and Black Bottom Saints

“A rich and layered tale about legacy, longing, and love, and about the importance of connection—to history, to family, to place, to community. In laying out the complex lives of her characters, Jones shows the many ways that the past resurfaces in the present as unfinished business. And on a deep, visceral level, Jones makes clear that our circle of connection to the lost African homeland remains unbroken.”

—Jeffery Renard Allen, author of Fat Time and Song of the Shank

From the Publisher

Anita Gail Jones's narration transports listeners across centuries and continents as she details the complex history of a Southern Black family. This saga centers on 70-year-old Fletcher Dukes, whose unexpected reunion with his long-lost love, Altovise Benson, upends his life and forces him to consider the true meaning of family and forgiveness. While the events Jones describes are often painful, she sensitively guides listeners through this emotional story, which covers issues that range from the enslavement of Fletcher's Senegalese ancestor to his current-day grandson's struggles with substance abuse. Some listeners may be distracted by the lack of distinct character voices, abrupt volume changes, and languid pace. But Jones's warm and compassionate delivery makes up for these issues as he infuses the story with a sense of hope. S.A.H. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

OCTOBER 2023 - AudioFile

2023-06-21
The sweeping story of a Black family in the South focuses on resilience and love.

At almost 70, Fletcher Dukes still lives on the seven-acre farm outside Albany, Georgia, where he grew up. The farm has belonged to his people for generations, a point of pride for a Black family in the Deep South. He’s content for the most part, although he misses his glory days as a young man active in the Civil Rights Movement—the same days in which he was in love with a girl named Altovise Benson. She left Albany long ago and became famous as a jazz singer; Fletcher stayed, made a happy marriage, and raised three daughters. He’s been a widower for several years when he and his sister, Olga—who’s still a busy political activist—go to the Piggly Wiggly for groceries one day. Fletcher recognizes her perfume before she even comes into sight: Altovise is back. The novel follows the story of Fletcher and Altovise forward and delves into their past while painting a warm portrait of his family and community. Some chapters leave Albany for Saginaw, Michigan, where a man named Siman Miller lives; others take the reader to the life of Malik Welé, a teenager living near the Senegal River in West Africa a couple of centuries ago. Their connections to Fletcher eventually become clear, as does the significance of the peach seed of the book’s title, a pit carved into the shape of a tiny monkey and handed down among the male members of the Dukes family. Dialogue varies from realistic and funny to some improbably lengthy monologues, but Jones is always insightful about family dynamics. And it’s a pleasure to see older people as main characters in a novel, depicted fully and without condescension.

Engaging characters keep a complex multigenerational plot moving to embody decades of Black history.

Kirkus Reviews