1960s
A01=Anita Gail Jones
adoption
Africa
African American
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Author_Anita Gail Jones
automatic-update
birthfather
birthmohter
black
Category1=Fiction
Category=FA
Category=FBA
Category=FS
Civil Rights
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
eq_bestseller
eq_fiction
eq_isMigrated=0
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_modern-contemporary
eq_nobargain
family
family history
fathers and daughters
fathers and sons
Georgia
intergenerational
Language_English
Obama era
PA=Available
peach seed monkey
present
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
recovery
rediscovered love
reunified
reunited lovers
romance
Senegal
slavery
SNCC
softlaunch
substance abuse
talisman
the South
traditions
trauma
Product details
- ISBN 9781250872050
- Weight: 702g
- Dimensions: 154 x 233mm
- Publication Date: 18 Sep 2023
- Publisher: Henry Holt & Company Inc
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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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 a woman’s 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 Altovise’s departure, Fletcher carves her a peach seed monkey with diamond eyes. As we learn via harrowing flashbacks to 1800’s Senegal, an undiscovered Dukes ancestor who was sold into slavery carved the first monkey - the 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 birthday - along with the tools and knowledge to carve them himself. By giving one to Altovise Fletcher initiates a physical and spiritual break in a tradition that like the Civil Rights Movement irrevocably shapes the lives of future generations including a Fletcher’s daughters, his grandson, Bo-D and a constellation of Dukes in the present.
