The Peach Keeper

Bantam

The Peach Keeper
Sarah Addison Allen
2011

The Summary
"The New York Times bestselling author of The Girl Who Chased the Moon welcomes you to her newest locale:  Walls of Water, North Carolina, where the secrets are thicker than the fog from the town's famous waterfalls, and the stuff of superstition is just as real as you want it to be.

"It's the dubious distinction of thirty-year-old Willa Jackson to hail from a fine old Southern family of means that met with financial ruin generations ago.  The Blue Ridge Madam--built by Willa's great-great-grandfather during Walls of Water's heyday, and once the town's grandest home--has stood for years as a lonely monument to misfortune and scandal.  And Willa herself has long strived to build a life beyond the brooding Jackson family shadow.

"But Willa has lately learned that an old classmate--socialite do-gooder Paxton Osgood, of the very prominent Osgood family--has restored the Blue Ridge Madam to her former glory, with plans to open a top-flight inn.  Maybe, at last, the troubled past can be laid to rest while something new and wonderful rises from its ashes.  But what rises instead is a skeleton, found buried beneath the property's lone peach tree, and certain to drag up dire consequences along with it.  For the bones--those of charismatic traveling salesman Tucker Devlin, who worked his dark charms on Walls of Water seventy-five years ago--are not all that lay hidden out of sight and mind.  Long-kept secrets surrounding the troubling remains have also come to light, seemingly heralded by a spate of sudden strange occurrences throughout the town.

"Now, thrust together in an unlikely friendship, united by a full-blooded mystery, Willa and Paxton must confront the dangerous passions and tragic betrayals that once bound their families--and uncover truths of the long-dead that have transcended time and defied the grave to touch the hearts and souls of the living.

"Resonant with insight into the deep and lasting power of friendship, love, and tradition, The Peach Keeper is a portrait of unshakable bonds that--in good times and bad, from one generation to the next--endure forever."

The Good
I loved listening to The Peach Keeper.  It reminded me a great deal of Garden Spells and The Girl Who Chased the Moon, but it has its own unique characters--although a few familiar faces do make a repeat appearance--and its own unique story.  It has much the same flavor:  a quirky Southern town, small hints of magic, complex mother-daughter relationships, and a deep sense of family and tradition that influences the thoughts, feelings, and actions of characters.

Like Allen's other novels, The Peach Keeper is weighty with history.  Specifically, it focuses on the turbulent past of the Jackson and Osgood families--and, more importantly, the unshakable bond held by Willa and Paxton's grandmothers, Georgie and Agatha.  It's a complex story with finely detailed characters, deep family roots, and subtle hints of magic that paint a rich tapestry of loss and love.

I loved the way Allen beautifully describes the Appalachian Mountains.  In Garden Spells, The Sugar Queen, and The Girl Who Chased the Moon, readers are introduced to the mountains of southern Appalachia.  However, in The Peach Keeper, we get a glimpse of the Blue Ridge Mountains--a small range of green, sloping mountains and hills in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee, running right through Virginia--and it's a beautiful sight to behold.

Since I'm familiar with the Blue Ridge Mountains and the surrounding region, I was inordinately pleased by Sarah Addison Allen's descriptions of the mountains and, more importantly, her fictional town Walls of Water.  It's a breathtaking location that feels right at home in the Blue Ridge Mountains.  More importantly, I was excited by her references to landmarks I knew and descriptions I recognized.  It was unexpectedly thrilling.

I also enjoyed the characters.  It's wonderful to see Willa and Paxton's relationship develop, to see a reflection of their grandmothers' relationship in their newly budding friendship, and it's incredibly sweet to see separate romantic interests crop up in their lives.  Love and excitement is the last thing Willa is looking for with Colin, and Paxton is trying to keep the status quo steady between herself and her best friend, Sebastian.

Their relationships are complicated--Willa trying to live down her past, Paxton trying to preserve her dearest friendship--but it's refreshing to see them confront their problems head-on, to see them work through the struggles to see their own self-worth and measure.  I enjoyed watching them grow, figure things out and fall in love.  It's almost sickly sweet, but it's all worth it for the feeling that everything worked out all right in the end.

The Bad
The Peach Keeper feels a little darker than Allen's other novels.  I mean, sure you find a particularly terrifying villain in Julian from The Sugar Queen, and you're confronted with domestic abuse in Garden Spells.  But most of these stories feel lighter, like you know that things will all work out in the end.

The Peach Keeper, on the other hand, has this dark undertone to it that influences much of the novel and makes it a more serious narrative.  Although it begins with Georgie and Agatha's ordeal in 1936, it doesn't really dissipate.  The violence feels fresh, more palpable, more pervasive, especially with the ghost of Tucker Devlin hanging over the story.

The Ugly
Murder.

A justified murder, but murder nonetheless.  It's a rather terrible story.