When Alice steps off the bus in 1957 Alabama, she fears persecution. It is then revealed that the town of New Jessup is all Black. She embraces the community and falls in love. When the Civil Rights movement comes to town, she has to decide what side of the community she is on.

I really enjoyed the atmosphere of New Jessup. Originally, part of Jessup, a white-run town, but the Black population was driven out by torch and pitchfork (like so many communities across the United States where the Black population is too successful). Now, New Jessup, an all-Black town, was created out of the swamp and ashes of the past. No separate but equal, only equal. Alice settles into the relief of escape from hate. However, they don't benefit as full citizens, with the white population taking their taxes and abusing their advantage to line their pockets. Will New Jessup remain segregated, or will they integrate like the rest of the country? Alice and her new family are at the heart of this struggle. Will they be run off and go north by the white side of town, or will they stay and help shape its fate?

I have heard wonderful things abut this book, but I just don't think I was the correct audience. I usually love books of this genre but found getting through this harder than my normal read. I did not think the writing flowed and just could not build a relationship with the characters. It's not you it's me, for this one.

This is a great debut novel! The quality of the writing does absolute justice to the subject it tackles. I am sucker for symbolism and poetic language in prose and this book does it well. I wish Jamila Minnicks the best of luck and can't wait to read what is next!

3.5 stars. Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for the ARC. This story revolves around Alice and Raymond who live in New Jessup, Alabama where the all Black residents have rejected integration and decided to keep the town segregated for their safety and to provide the best for their people. Alice and Raymond fall in love. Raymond is involved with secret political dealings that could jeopardize New Jessup and Alice and Raymond being allowed to stay there. There are pressures from within and outside New Jessup and Alice is left to try support and husband but also protect the New Jessup she loves. The story takes the reader on a journey of seeing all the perspectives that people encountered during desegregation.

A very interesting read -- I could not believe it is Minnick's debut novel! I really enjoyed the story and the characters -- it takes place in the Jim Crow era in the south and tensions abound within the city of New Jessup about rather to integrate or stay separate as a Black Community. Many other important issues are also touched upon including black maternal health and family and faith. The writing is exquisite and I really cared about the main characters. This book is definitely worth a read. I look forward to future works from this author.

Thank you to Netgalley and Algonquin Books for an ARC and I have left this honest review voluntarily.

Thank you Netgalley and Algonquin Books for my advance readers copy of Moonrise Over New Jessup.

Driven from her home and with no word from her sister, Alice Young, a young black woman takes what little she has and boards a train hoping to reunite with her sister in Chicago. However, after being unable to afford the rest of the way, Alice steps off to find herself in New Jessup Alabama—-an all black town with no segregation, racial discrimination, or white oppression. In awe and disbelief Alice takes her time observing her new environment and takes opportunities to save for her future. I love the rich and safe environment New Jessup offers, while it seems like a paradise for many during the late 1950’s, it also holds an unsaid air of reality that while New Jessup is run by an all black community, the smallest hint of unrest or involvement in boycotts could break the tentative peace.

I love Alice’s character, she is strong, smart but also knows the truth about the unkind world around her. While she doesn’t want to make waves in her new home, she also deep down, doesn’t want things to stay the same.

Identity, finding where you belong in a world determined to cast you out, Moonrise Over New Jessup is a beautiful and eye opening novel. And in her own way, Alice comes to learn the meaning of home and what she can fight for. The relationship between her and Raymond unfolded as reader’s get an insight into the complex balance of marriage, trust and love.

Rating ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 5/5

Cons:
I did wish the book dove into the mechanics between the relationship between New Jessup and the town outside their borders. While the negative impacts of what could have were briefly explained, there was no "showing" of the consequences, thus giving the novel a bit of an unsatisfactory feel regarding the end to Alice's story.

Reading Moonrise Over New Jessup gave me a new perspective on the desegregation of towns and schools in the south. Specifically, Alabama during the civil rights movement. Though this is a historical fiction, it is based during the start of the civil rights movement in Alabama and how there were two different mindsets of Blacks to gaining equity and equality in the country for Blacks. Not all Black folks wanted to integrate with white folks. Some Blacks just wanted to stay in their all Black neighborhoods, towns, schools, but wanted their tax dollars to equally distributed to such. This story is based in an all Black town called New Jessup, Alabama. A town built brick by brick by Blacks with generations of families owning thriving businesses and supported by close knit families and neighbors. A young new generation of Blacks have decided to participate in the blooming uprise of the civil rights movement and the older generation will need to decide to keep the status quo and go along to get along with the white people in the neighboring town or take a stand for their rights as Black citizens. They will also need to decide , do they even WANT to integrate?

Though, at times, the pace was a little slow and drawn out for me, I thoroughly enjoyed this take on the civil rights movement in Alabama, and was deeply invested in the lives of the characters and their well being.

I was very interested in the beginning of this book, but it lost me as it progressed—some of the interpersonal conflicts eclipsed the larger themes that I wanted to hear more about. Really great writing, though; an excellent example of writing a character with a strong narrative voice.

3.5/5

This book was just stunning! The plot and writing are well crafted, and I loved the exploration of race and family.

A worthy successor to novels like the Vanishing Half. Minnicks is a voice to watch in contemporary fiction. Best book of 2023 so far!

Thank you for Netgalley and the publishers for this digital ARC.

I recognize the author’s talent and her literary writing style is sophisticated. I especially drawn to the atmosphere the author curated. I felt like I was there in New Jessup.

While admired our MC, I can’t say that I became as attached to her as I was expecting. I wonder if that is due to the slow burn nature of the story. There isn’t much that happens…I kept feeling like we were building to something that never happened.

This novel wasn’t my favorite but I sincerely believe it’s a work of art. I know many will have found it fulfilling, I did not.

Alice Young accidentally stumbles across New Jessup, Alabama in 1957 after fleeing her hometown. New Jessup is an all-Black town created by individuals who want no part of integration and believe that Black people will fare better by remaining together and rejecting desegregation. There are no “whites only” signs, no restrictions are where Blacks may go, and no white people living there at all. In New Jessup, Alice begins a relationship with Raymond, an organizer whose activities could lead to their removal from their town. As turmoil grows within New Jessup as well as in the rest of the country, Alice must contend with balancing work and homelife, her search for her missing sister, and how to protect her own daughter from the world at large. This glimpse into a less well-known aspect of history with which I was completely unfamiliar was both fascinating and compelling.

This was an absolutely incredible book. Jamila Minnicks' "Moonrise Over New Jessup" is a fiery debut that will leave you breathless. A historical fiction like none other, the plot is riveting and thought-provoking, and the characters are fully fleshed out and three-dimensional. Minnicks' novel is of the civil rights, of justice, of love, and of humanity. I highly recommend "Moonrise Over New Jessup" to everyone.

This is a must read! It opens your eyes and makes you look at things differently. You will fall in love with the main character. She is a FORCE!

As I started reading this debut novel, I was struck by the lyrical – almost poetic – opening line. Throughout the novel, Minnick has woven beautiful threads of wording into this historically and culturally relevant tapestry. While recognizing that this is not “my story” to critique, I can appreciate the storytelling and develop a deeper understanding of an overlooked/under-discussed element of Black history from a new talent in the book-writing sphere.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.
Interesting take on the civil rights movement from a small insulted town in Alabama that is entirely populated and run by African Americans. The racism and segregation is all around them, but in their little town, New Jessup where they live freely. While many of the young people are participating in activism in neighboring towns many others feel that its not worth the risk of upsetting their utopia. Our main character Alice feels like she has finally found a home but those she loves may upset it all, ending up arrested, or dead.
The writing is beautiful, but perhaps a bit too precious. I found this book incredibly slow and had a hard time finishing it- lots of skimming . The characters mostly discuss what is going on, but nothing much happens. As a white person who is trying to educate myself I didn’t find this book very helpful.

This is a stunning novel—poetic prose and compelling characters with complex relationships and motivations. The central motif of the moon and magic creates a dreamy atmosphere over most of the novel, underscored by the fact that Rosie remains missing. Really excellent piece of historical fiction.

It is 1957. Alice grew up in rural Alabama, working the land with her family. Her mother died when she was young. Her sister Rosie took off for Chicago. Alice hasn't heard from Rosie for years. And now, with her father's death, she has to leave. The landlord got the worst of his effort to assault Alice. After she buries him, she boards a bus, heading for Chicago. But when the bus stops in a town where all the residents are "Negro" and there are no "colored entrances" to the train station, Alice is drawn to stay and make her life in New Jessup, Alabama. She is a gifted seamstress and she finds work in a store operated by a woman who becomes a mentor. She meets a local mechanic, Raymond Campbell, who lives on some acreage with his father. And she is faced, just at the start of the southern civil rights/voting rights movement with an array of ways to think about race, "equal" rights, and sovereignty.

For New Jessup has a terrible past and tremendous community pride that is balanced on a treacherously unstable concept. When reconstruction hit, the former enslaved residents moved to the other side of the railroad tracks in Jessup, a situation that made the white townspeople uneasy. Their part of town was called, "Negro Jessup," until 1903. That is when the riots happened. White residents tore through Negro Jessup, stole everything in sight and threw the residents out. The survivors of Negro Jessup who stayed moved to undesirable swampland, in an area on the other side of the woods and founded New Jessup.

Ultimately, a lot of issues arise in this masterful book, about how the Black citizens of New Jessup have kept the peace with the white community of Jessup; about younger folks who want to see some change to ensure New Jessup has sufficient independence to withstand another 1903 charge; and about how the burgeoning civil rights movement's philosophy of integration is at odds with New Jessup's philosophy of intentional separation. The town itself is the primary character in the novel, with the elders committed to the way things have been for over fifty years, the outside agitators being other Black people from the national civil rights movement, and the young men and women in the town looking to make adjustments and bring about a new, New Jessup. The characters are uniformly well drawn as the townspeople find friction where there once was acceptance of all things necessary to maintain the status quo. The elders see the shaky relationship with the powers that be in Jessup as the "price to pay" to be left in peace. The next generation says that price is too heavy a price to pay.

So, this is a coming of age story of a town founded on violence and succeeding on terms that once worked for everyone. It is the story of a romance between a smart, poor Alabama farm girl who loves to read and her smart, formally educated and more sophisticated husband. It is a story of the many different points of view that come to play on issues of race, both within and outside the Black community, set in a time of tremendous focus and transition on issues of race "relations." I cannot do this book justice, the lush lovely emotionally satisfying way this story is told. Just. Read it. A real favorite for me!

Moonrise Over New Jessup is a beautifully written, character driven novel, set in the 1950s in Alabama. It gives a fresh perspective on the early days of the civil rights movement.

The story focuses on Alice who fled her home under heartbreaking circumstances. On the way to connect with her sister in Chicago, she got off the bus in New Jessup and was shocked to find a segregated town with black people. She was welcomed into the community and found work as a Seamstress. She later met Raymond, who would eventually become her husband.

I found it interesting to read about the struggles the town faced and the plans to protect their way of life. The writing is beautiful and themes of love and family were carefully explored. I was disappointed that we didn’t get a big finale but still enjoyed the story. This is not a book to be rushed but one to be savored and perfect for a book club discussion.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for a complimentary copy. All reviews are my own.

The writing is as flowery as the cover. When I was an editor, I often found that reporters tried to hide a story's lack of substance with overwriting.

To be clear, this book is historically substantial and important. Minnicks is calling attention to the under-reported history of prosperous Black towns/communities and the fact that integration was not always seen as a good thing by Black communities. Her research is clearly deep and impressive.

The narrative is not as substantial. It's meandering. Lots happens to little consequence. Another review said the two main characters -- Alice & Raymond -- are noble but dull, and that's how I felt, too. I was so much more interested in some of the side characters. Minnicks builds tension around a few threads, but never really resolves them. While that is probably true to life, it wasn't a super satisfactory read.

Thanks to NetGalley for the advance copy.