Where Wild Peaches Grow

In Natchez, Mississippi, the death of Jasper Davenport sets in motion a reckoning between his two estranged daughters, forcing them to confront the secrets, lies, and betrayals that fractured their family over two decades.

The novel opens the morning after Jasper's death, as neighbors watch a tenant being evicted for picking peaches from a tree on one of his rental properties. The peach trees on Davenport family land are off-limits, a rule tied to Jasper's younger daughter, Nona, who guarded them as a child. That fixation earned her the nickname "Peaches" and eventually shaped her career as a historian. Julia Curtis, Jasper's older daughter and a real estate agent, drives past the Devil's Punchbowl, a kudzu-covered canyon near the Mississippi River, on her way to collect her grandmother, Opal Davenport, for funeral arrangements.

Julia has been caring for Jasper since his first stroke. She recalls how he came home furious after learning the tenant had baked a pie with fruit from the forbidden tree, and how his rage triggered a fatal second stroke. Now she takes charge of the funeral alongside Opal, who is eighty-seven and has outlived all four of her children. Julia must also contact Nona, whom she has not spoken to in roughly twenty years. Nona left Natchez in the middle of the night as a teenager and never returned, much like their mother, Cat, who abandoned the family when the girls were young. Julia blames both women for leaving her to shoulder every family burden alone.

In Chicago, Dr. Nona Davenport is a professor of African American Studies who teaches about historical revisionism and undocumented Black history. Since leaving Natchez, she has become reserved, anxious, and dependent on her boyfriend of one year, Eli Bryce, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who makes most decisions for her. When Julia calls with news of Jasper's death, Nona is stricken with shock and regret, realizing she never contacted her father in all the years she was gone.

A flashback to nearly thirty years earlier reveals the roots of the family's disintegration. Jasper, drawn into a botched robbery by a gambling associate, fled to Vidalia, Louisiana, to avoid arrest. While there, he fathered a child with another woman. Cat, devastated by the betrayal, left the girls with Opal, promising to return once settled. She never did. Jasper threatened to prevent Cat from ever seeing the girls if she pursued a divorce, trapping her in permanent separation. Young Julia assumed a maternal role, caring for Nona while Cat worked and after she left.

As teenagers, the sisters grew apart. When Nona fell in love with Marcus Curtis, she planned a secret elopement and confided in Julia, who promised not to tell. But Sanganette Gautier-Preston, a white schoolteacher and the older sister of Nona's best friend Ruben "Ruby" Gautier, overheard the plan and told Ruby, who told Opal. Together, Opal and Ruby stopped Marcus by lying that Jasper was waiting at the bus station with a shotgun. Marcus never showed. Nona, believing Julia had betrayed her and that Jasper had intervened, boarded the bus alone and enrolled at a college in Chicago on a full scholarship.

For twenty years, Nona believed Julia and Jasper had conspired against her. She cut off contact with everyone except Opal and Cat, whom she reconnected with after Cat arranged a seemingly coincidental meeting on campus. Jasper had secretly sent Cat to watch over Nona, with two conditions: Cat must never reveal Jasper's involvement or contact Julia. Cat, desperate for any connection to her daughters, agreed.

Nona flies to Natchez for the funeral, stopping first in Gary, Indiana, to visit Cat. She views Jasper's body, recalling how he once climbed into the Devil's Punchbowl to rescue her after she fell in as a child and then planted a peach tree at Opal's house so she would never risk such danger again. At Opal's, she reunites with Ruby, now a civil rights lawyer, and learns that Jasper left a will requiring a Monday reading.

The next morning, Nona meets her previously unknown nephew, Jayden, Julia's fourteen-year-old son. When Jayden introduces her to his father, she sees Marcus standing in the yard. The realization that Marcus married Julia sends Nona reeling, and she flees.

The truth emerges in layers over the following days. Ruby challenges Nona about how much she has changed. Opal responds to Nona's anger with blunt pragmatism: Nona chose to leave, chose not to return, and chose to shut everyone out. Marcus, during a conversation at his bar, the Starlight Lounge, reveals that he and Julia never dated. Julia told him she was pregnant after a single encounter, so he married her. He divorced her when a blood test proved Jayden could not be his biological son. Julia had been in a destructive relationship with Bisset Brown, a manipulative and abusive man who is Jayden's biological father, and Marcus married her to protect the child. He tells Nona he has never loved anyone but her and that Julia kept her promise: It was Opal and Ruby who stopped the elopement, not Julia or Jasper.

Nona is devastated to learn she abandoned her entire life based on a misunderstanding. At the wake and funeral, the sisters begin a fragile reconciliation. Eli arrives unannounced at the graveside, and Nona feels intruded upon rather than comforted. That evening he proposes, but Nona does not accept. She recognizes she has mistaken his protectiveness for love and that his controlling nature has kept her diminished.

When Bisset appears at Julia's door demanding to see Jayden, the sisters stand shoulder to shoulder and block the doorway. Julia sends Nona away with Jayden and calls Raymond Donaldson, a man from the funeral home who has shown steady romantic interest, for support. Later, Julia erupts at Opal's house, unleashing twenty years of pain about abandonment, secrets, and Marcus. Nona fires back about Julia marrying her fiancé. Jayden reveals he has known all along that Bisset is his biological father because Marcus told him years ago, and he kept silent to spare his mother. Julia's anger finally breaks into vulnerability.

At the will reading, each sister receives a sealed letter from Jasper. Julia receives the bulk of the real estate, while Nona and Jayden are left joint ownership of the Devil's Punchbowl. Jasper's letter to Nona explains he left her the canyon because she has the mind and strength to set its historical legacy right. He confesses he sent Cat to watch over her and asks forgiveness. His letter to Julia asks the sisters to bring their half-brother, Benjamin "Benny" Eanes, a dentist in Baton Rouge, into the family. Julia already knew about Benjamin from a birth certificate she found while cleaning out Jasper's apartment but kept the secret to protect her father.

The sisters piece together that Jasper's affair likely drove Cat away. Nona arranges a phone call reuniting Julia with Cat, and Cat agrees to come to Natchez. The sisters plan to find Benjamin together.

In the closing pages, Nona visits the Melrose Estate, an antebellum plantation her father directed her to in his letter. She finds preserved records of enslaved people, the documented history she has dedicated her career to uncovering. She decides to stay in Natchez, return Eli's ring, and take time to sort out her feelings for Marcus, with whom she shares a warm, easy breakfast at the Starlight. When she introduces herself to the estate's recordkeeper, she gives her name as Nona Davenport, then adds that people can call her Peaches, reclaiming the nickname and, with it, herself.