Moonrise Over New Jessup -- Jamila Minnicks, Hardcover

Winner of the 2021 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, an enchanting and thought-provoking debut about a Black woman doing whatever it takes to protect all she loves on Alabama soil.

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.

Author: Jamila Minnicks
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 01/10/2023
Pages: 336
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.05lbs
Size: 8.50h x 6.40w x 1.80d
ISBN: 9781643752464

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 08/01/2022 pg. 2
Kirkus Reviews 11/01/2022
Publishers Weekly 11/21/2022
Booklist 12/01/2022 pg. 112
Library Journal 01/01/2023 pg. 83