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Start giftingThe Peach Seed
A Novel
Narrator
Anita Gail Jones
This audiobook uses AI narration.
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Length
15 hours 27 minutes
Language
English
Bookseller recommendation
“For some reason, when I began reading The Peach Seed, it was as though I was listening to a voice-over on one of those true crime shows on TV... laying out the story, beginning with a lovely description of 2012 Georgia, going on to describe a scene from history. I was captured! This is a love story, and a story about history and heritage and, above all, memory. I won't described the storyline. If beautiful language and images aren't enough for you, then go ahead and pass by this debut novel. But I promise you, if you take a chance and read it, you won't be sorry...Stories like that of Fletcher Dukes and the gift to his love - a peach seed monkey talisman - help us to understand what it means to have family, to have history and tradition, and the courage to change that same tradition. The author is a visual artist as well as a writer and has implanted her gifts in this book. I wish you much joy in the discovery of her masterpiece.”
— Linda • Auntie's Bookstore
"Anita Gail Jones's narration transports listeners across centuries and continents as she details the complex history of a Southern Black family."- AudioFile
This program is read by the author, who brings more than twenty-five years of experience as a professional oral-tradition storyteller of global folklore as well as original and personal stories from her southwest Georgia upbringing.
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.
A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt & Company.
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.
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.
Reviews
"An epic, enchanting debut."
—Lauren Puckett-Pope, Elle
"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
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