Overview

"A provocative and enchanting debut about a Black woman doing whatever it takes to protect all she loves at the beginning of the Civil Rights movement in Alabama. It's 1957, and after leaving the only home she has ever known, Alice Young steps off the bus into the all-Black town of New Jessup, Alabama, 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. But Raymond continues to push alternatives for enhancing New Jessup's political power. So 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. This novel is both a celebration of Black joy and a timely examination of the opposing viewpoints that attended desegregation in America. Readers of Brit Bennett's The Vanishing Half and Robert Jones, Jr.'s The Prophets will love Moonrise Over New Jessup."

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Reviews

A celebration of Black culture that takes in opposing viewpoints on the issue of desegregation in that era. -- Library Journal 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

My favorite novels light up my brain with things I hadn't considered before - and this one does exactly that. The deep complexity of the American Civil Rights movement; the various, sometimes opposing approaches of its leaders to desegregation; the gains and inevitable casualties that social progress can claim. With compelling characters and a heart-pounding plot, Jamila Minnicks pulled me into pages of history I'd never turned before. --Barbara Kingsolver An immersive and timely recasting of history by a gloriously talented writer to watch. You will fall in love with New Jessup: the town and the book. --Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, author of The Revisioners Elegant and nuanced, Moonrise Over New Jessup is an incandescent work of art through-and-through, from a powerful new voice. --Jason Mott, author of National Book Award winner Hell of a Book Moonrise over New Jessup is a tender and beautifully written debut that shines light on the untold stories of the women who supported the foot soldiers of the bourgeoning civil rights movement. Warm and affecting, this book will draw you in with its heart. --Heidi W. Durrow, author of the New York Times bestseller The Girl Who Fell from the Sky No one who's read Zora Neale Hurston ever forgets her Eatonville. So too will Jamila Minnicks's New Jessup live on in the American imagination as both a place and an idea. Moonrise Over New Jessup is a staggeringly beautiful love letter to Blackness -- particularly southern Blackness -- that celebrates the joys, sadness, and multiplicity of existence outside the white gaze. An absolute triumph, Moonrise Over New Jessup confirms a major voice in Jamila Minnicks, a writer everyone should be watching. --Dionne Irving, author of The Islands

A celebration of Black culture that takes in opposing viewpoints on the issue of desegregation in that era. -- Library Journal 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

Author Information

"Jamila Minnicks is the author of Moonrise Over New Jessup, the 2021 winner of the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction. Her work is also published in CRAFT Literary Magazine, The Write Launch, and The Silent World in Her Vase. Her piece ""Politics of Distraction"" was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan, the Howard University School of Law, and Georgetown University. She lives in Washington, DC. Find her at www.jamila-minnicks.com. Karen Chilton is a multi-talented author, actor, and audiobook narrator, as well as a freelance writer, script writer, and librettist. She wrote the biography Hazel Scott about the trailblazing jazz pianist and coauthored I Wish You Love with legendary jazz vocalist Gloria Lynne. Her acting credits include It's Kind of a Funny Story and Half Nelson. She won a New Professional Theatre Writers award for her play Convergence and an Audiofile Golden Earphones Award for her narration of Karolyn Smardz Frost's I've Got a Home in Glory Land. She has also narrated Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow and Jennifer Berry Hawes' Grace Will Lead Us Home: The Charleston Church Massacre and the Hard, Inspiring Journey to Forgiveness."

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