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The Peach Seed: A Novel
Henry Holt and Co.
ISBN13:
9781250872050
$29.99
$28.00
A multigenerational novel and an epic debut that explores the origins of a south Georgia familys tradition and how its modern-day sons and daughters struggle with the legacies of Americas Civil Rights Movement and the far-reaching impacts of the 1800s slave trade from Senegal to Charleston, SC. On a routine day, Fletcher Dukes drives his older sister, Olga, who is losing her sight, to do weekly grocery shopping at the Piggly Wiggly. On the liquor aisle, they pass a tall woman, head bowed reading a wine label. Fletcher smells her perfume first, then sees a strawberry birthmark on the nape of the womans neck and knows at once that this is his lost love, Altovise Benson. Fletcher and Altovise risked their lives together in sit-ins and marches, but their plan to marry was interrupted when the police turned a peaceful protest violent. The two were jailed in different towns leading to a separation that would ultimately span 52 years. Before Altovises departure, Fletcher carves her a peach seed monkey with diamond eyes. As we learn via harrowing flashbacks to 1800s Senegal, an undiscovered Dukes ancestor who was sold into slavery carved the first monkeythe Peach Seed Monkey that forms the talismanic tradition, the rite of passage, that each generation of Dukes man gifts to his son on his 13th birthdayalong with the tools and knowledge to carve them himself. By giving one to Altovise, Fletcher initiates a physical and spiritual break in a tradition thatlike the Civil Rights Movementirrevocably shapes the lives of future generations including Fletchers daughters, his grandson, Bo-D and a constellation of Dukes in the present.
- | Author: Anita Gail Jones
- | Publisher: Henry Holt And Co.
- | Publication Date: Aug 01, 2023
- | Number of Pages: 448 pages
- | Language: English
- | Binding: Hardcover
- | ISBN-10: 1250872057
- | ISBN-13: 9781250872050
- Author:
- Anita Gail Jones
- Publisher:
- Henry Holt And Co.
- Publication Date:
- Aug 01, 2023
- Number of pages:
- 448 pages
- Language:
- English
- Binding:
- Hardcover
- ISBN-10:
- 1250872057
- ISBN-13:
- 9781250872050