The Peach Seed

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.)