Moonrise Over New Jessup

August 1, 2022

It's 1957, and the all-Black town of New Jessup, AL, has opted for self-determination over integration as a means of Black advancement. New arrival Alice Young soon falls for Raymond Campbell, who's questioning the town's precepts, a move that could get them both in trouble. Pushcart Prize nominee Minnicks won the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction for this debut novel, a celebration of Black culture that takes in opposing viewpoints on the issue of desegregation in that era.

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2022
A Southern community confronts the meaning of Black power. In a warmly appealing book debut, Minnicks, winner of the 2021 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, considers the fraught question of integration from the perspective of an all-Black community in rural Alabama. It's 1957, and Alice Young is on her way to Birmingham after fleeing abuse in the segregated town where she grew up. Getting off the bus to stretch her legs, she is incredulous to find herself in a place with no "WHITES ONLY signs and backdoor Negro entrances." New Jessup, she learns, had been established by freedmen who separated from the White community "across the woods," where they had worked "from field to house and everywhere inside." Even after Whites tried to run the Black people of New Jessup off the land, they rebuilt and set down roots, started thriving businesses, a school, a hospital, and farms. But, Alice soon discovers, there are troubles: A growing national movement for desegregation has incited dissension. Some in New Jessup agree with the NAACP that integration will be favorable for Blacks; others, that "independence, and not mixing" is a better goal. In New Jessup, the independence movement is adopted by the National Negro Advancement Society, whose aim is "keeping folks from across the woods outta our hair and our pockets for good!" Alice would prefer to distance herself from politics, but she becomes immersed in the controversy when she falls in love with an NNAS activist. How, the NNAS asks, can separation work for Negro communities? Will integration mean equal rights--or merely upending lives for something neither Blacks nor Whites want? What is a viable path to real power? Minnicks' impassioned characters struggle with those questions as they think about the consequences of court-mandated integration and the reality of living in a society where, Alice realizes, "not all unwelcoming is posted in the window at eye level." A thoughtful look at a complex issue.

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November 21, 2022
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. Agent: Michelle Brower, Trellis Literary.

December 1, 2022
Civil rights-era fiction generally presupposes that all African Americans fought ardently for integration. Yet in her first novel, winner of the PEN/Bellwether Prize, Minnicks brilliantly presents the Black struggle through an anti-integration lens that is equally powerful and persuasive. Alice, on the run from an abusive white neighbor, finds herself in New Jessup, Alabama, an all-Black town with a history of fierce independence. To Alice, New Jessup is miraculous. As she falls in love with Randall, a son of one of the town founders, she grows determined to protect this island of safety and cultural pride. All Randall wants is financial and political independence from the exploitative whites beyond the woods, and neither has any use for race mixing. Yet they are beset by Black integration activists as well as conservative town elders who fear that any "agitation" will spell the community's doom. At a time when many African Americans are questioning the value of integration and the subsequent loss of Black community institutions, Alice and Randall's principled commitment to "separate but equal" segregation is not easily dismissed.

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Starred review from January 1, 2023

DEBUT In this 2021 winner of the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, getting off a Birmingham-bound bus in the town of New Jessup entirely changes the life of Alice, our heroine and narrator. The year is 1957, and Alice is amazed that this small town in Alabama has no signage for "coloreds only" at water fountains and restrooms. This community has only Black residents and is a well-organized, well-run, prosperous place. There Alice meets and falls in love with Raymond Campbell, the grandson of one of New Jessup's founders and the owner of a successful automotive repair and towing business. Raymond secretly belongs to the National Negro Advancement Society, an organization striving to keep the races segregated and allow Black Alabamians to flourish without the aid of white people. Alice eventually learns that Raymond's local group aims to make New Jessup a recognized municipality, and like the national group, they do not favor racial integration but separation and self-governance. VERDICT An outstanding writer, Minnicks excels at capturing the atmosphere and issues of a specific locale at a particular time, the Deep South at the dawn of the civil rights era. This highly recommended title is an excellent choice for book discussion groups and would make a great movie.--Lisa Rohrbaugh

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June 10, 2024

Minnicks's debut, the 2021 winner of the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, follows Alice Young, who, in 1957, flees her home in segregated rural Alabama, hoping to join her sister in Chicago. She alights at a rest stop in New Jessup, AL, and is stunned to find that it is an all-Black community. Curious, she stays. The people of New Jessup have no interest in integrating with the white community in Jessup. They want to become a separate municipality--electing their own town council, collecting their own taxes, and running their own schools. Alice falls in love with Raymond Campbell, a secret leader of the National Negro Advancement Society. This group, headquartered in Washington, DC, promotes separation over racial integration. Alice soon finds she must navigate the town's politics and walk a fine line between conflicting opinions. Narrator Karen Chilton skillfully uses Alice's voice to carry the story, capturing the nuances of Alice's emotions and the conviction of her beliefs. VERDICT Fans of historical fiction will find much to love in this book, which offers a different perspective on desegregation at the dawn of the civil rights era.--Joanna M. Burkhardt

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.