Black people have a complicated relationship with history. The characters in Shawntelle Madison’s latest historical fiction novel, The Fallen Fruit, are able to face their past head-on and challenge the trials that plagued their ancestors, but not without cost.
The book begins with an illustration of the Bridge family tree starting in the 1720s and covering seven generations through the late 1980s. Within nearly each generation, there is a birth or death date replaced by a question mark. This is not surprising because the branches of so many Black family trees are clipped short by the pruning shears of slavery. Individuals were bought and sold as property, families were separated, and names were changed or purposely omitted from records—not to mention the possibility of someone escaping enslavement—making a complete tracing of African Americans’ heritage virtually impossible. Readers learn very quickly, though, that the Bridges are doubly cursed. Someone at every generational level at some point “falls.” They are snatched back into the past and forced to live outside their original timeline. Some survive through to the time from which they fell, while others would not come within fifty years of it under the best circumstances. With that, the question marks become question marks.
Much like the way Madison subverts the family tree expectation by introducing a fantastical element to her historical fiction novel, she also turns the concept of story categorization itself on its ear. The book vacillates between mystery, romance, fantasy, and horror. Place is a strong enough theme that we might even categorize The Fallen Fruit as a work of regionalism. All of it occurs under an umbrella of historical fiction, essentially creating a family tree of genres.
Mystery
The family history. The story begins with Cecily, a Bridge descendant, visiting Charlottesville, Virginia, when a death cedes her an inheritance of her family’s land. Not knowing her father or any of his kin, she begins the journey of tracing her paternal heritage. While on the grounds, she comes across a family Bible along with a receipt and a hand-drawn map of the grounds that are all very old. Rather than selling the property, she becomes consumed with discovering the secrets held within the inscriptions in the Bible (including names of ancestors) and spends months away from her husband and children searching for answers. It’s a slow process partly because there are so many people to research across so many generations. This is one flaw of the text considering there are so many names to keep up with bouncing back and forth through time following people who even change their names after falling. The hammer comes down when Cecily learns she may be the next to fall.
Romance
Cecily and Winston. Sabrina and Luke. Emily and Matthew. Readers spend enough time with these couples that for significant stretches, the relationships dominate the plot. Cecily is away from home for a long time making excuses for her absence as she chases clues to explain her family’s generational curse. But when her husband, Winston, gets fed up, he packs up their sons and drives from Nashville to meet her. Winston doesn’t believe her findings, and ultimately, they try to have a romantic picnic as a distraction that Cecily treats almost like a prisoner’s last meal. Sabrina and Luke are in love, but he is betrothed to her sister. When Luke succumbs to the curse and becomes the first of the Bridge family to fall into the past, the book follows him on his travels through time, slavery, war, and more until he finds himself back where he started. It’s been twenty-two years for him, but only days for Sabrina. The idea that he found his way back to her is heart wrenching when life picks up where they left off and he comes to marry Sabrina’s sister. The book ends with Emily and Matthew and their restrained love. She knows she has feelings for him, but hesitates to act because she’s decided she will move back to Charlottesville in a few years’ time. Readers become invested in these relationships as the characters reveal themselves through their time on the page.
Horror
The curse. Amidst the entire book looms a cloud of despair once it’s known that one or more of the characters will be ripped from their current life and deposited in some foreign time and forced to navigate brand-new circumstances. Luke disappears right in front of Sabrina and her sister as he’s about to speak. Multiple families lose children to the curse simultaneously, and the terror of the parents learning of their tragedy and the sorrow they experience afterward make family and neighbors turn against each other. Cecily discovers she may be next to fall and frantically tries to learn all she can about how the curse operates to perhaps find a solution, but she’s working against a ticking clock. She hears myths about violent murders and even a “fallen” person kidnapping his younger self in a desperate attempt to change the course of events. The ever-present threat evokes enough fear and dread that it cannot be ignored.
The Fallen Fruit is proof of Madison’s self-imposed social responsibility. It is important to tell stories not only to give voice to the voiceless in history, but also to strengthen the voices of the present regarding how they speak to the future. Just after legislation begins to move the needle toward improving the freedoms and rights of Black people in the 1960s, Cecily falls and is dragged back to 1911. The institution of slavery was no longer officially in place in her original timeline, so Black people empowered themselves to improve their economic standings through education and career choices. Unfortunately, they still faced unprecedented violence and mistreatment from the government and society at large. Madison seems to be cautioning readers of where society stands today, drawing parallels between the practice of banning books that expose the truth of U.S. history, and systematically rolling back civil rights laws being deemed unconstitutional by certain political groups who are attempting to undermine the ideologies surrounding America’s fragile democracy. This is as true for 2024 as it was for the 1950s and in 1911. The Fallen Fruit is a siren—a warning to prepare for the possibility of tragedy that may move society backward. But it is just as much a beacon of hope, illustrating the resilience of Black people who can endure, persevere, and thrive, just as history has proven time and time again.
FICTION
The Fallen Fruit
By Shawntelle Madison
Amistad Press
Published September 3, 2024
