Moonrise Over New Jessup
A Novel
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
"With compelling characters and a heart-pounding plot, Jamila Minnicks pulled me into pages of history I’d never turned before."―Barbara Kingsolver, New York Times bestselling author of Demon Copperhead
Winner of the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, an enchanting and thought-provoking debut novel about a Black woman doing whatever it takes to protect all she loves on Alabama soil during the Civil Rights Movement.
It’s 1957, and after leaving the only home she has ever known, Alice Young steps off the bus into all-Black New Jessup, where residents have largely rejected integration as the means for Black social advancement. Instead, they seek to maintain, and fortify, the community they cherish on their “side of the woods.” In this place, Alice falls in love with Raymond Campbell, whose clandestine organizing activities challenge New Jessup’s longstanding status quo and could lead to the young couple’s expulsion—or worse—from the home they both hold dear. As they marry and raise children together, Alice must find a way to balance her undying support for his underground work with her desire to protect New Jessup from the rising pressure of upheaval from inside, and outside, their side of town.
Based on the history of the many Black towns and settlements established across the country, Jamila Minnicks's heartfelt and riveting debut is both a celebration of Black joy and a timely examination of the opposing viewpoints that attended desegregation in America.
Longlisted for The Center for Fiction 2023 First Novel Prize
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Pen/Bellwether Prize winner Minnicks debuts with the uneven story of a young woman's relationship with her all-Black Alabama community. It's 1957 when Alice Young leaves an abusive landlord for a new start in New Jessup, a unique settlement founded by a coalition of Black families who believed in the ideas of separation espoused by Booker T. Washington. Alice quickly finds a room with a pastor and his wife, and a job sewing at the local dress shop. Soon, she falls in love with the charming Raymond Campbell, who is secretly involved with the National Negro Advancement Society. The community forbids such "agitating," believing it will draw unwanted and dangerous attention from the white side of town and the law, and Alice agrees, not wanting her idyllic new home disturbed. She is soon torn between her love for Raymond and her love for New Jessup. Minnicks brings nuance to Alice's dilemma, but the florid prose tends toward the overwrought: "The moon was generous with its light on our skin, streaming through the window as a creamy night sun." There is much to love in these characters and their resilience, but Minnicks frequently gets in the way.
