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
“On the surface, The Peach Seed seems mostly about inheritance and tradition, but this engrossing novel is also about partnership in the Black community—historically and now: we are children of strong women and strong men. Inarguably, Black men take a beating in American society, but The Peach Seed reminds us that we often survive our scars. You will not want to put this engrossing story down, as Anita Gail Jones introduces a whole family of survivors, planted and deeply rooted in Albany, Georgia. The Peach Seed presents a family replete with intergenerational struggles, triumphs of compassion, and fine examples of Black male bravery, compassion, resilience, and persistence, as they love their women and children and as they demand as much manhood as they can muster for themselves. The Peach Seed is a surprising book, a refreshing story, and a novel that restores Black men to their place in the family, offering an alternative to the mythic, stereotypic matriarchy by acknowledging Black men where they stand.”
—A.J. Verdelle, author of The Good Negress and Miss Chloe: A Memoir of a Literary Friendship with Toni Morrison
“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
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.
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
