The Peach Keeper

Fate never promises to tell you everything up front. You aren’t always shown the path in life you’re supposed to take. But if there was one thing she’d learned in the past few weeks, it was that sometimes, when you’re really lucky, you meet someone with a map.

Paxton Osgood and Willa Jackson both grew up in Walls of Water, North Carolina, but they seem to be from two completely different worlds. Paxton has always been a society girl. She’s part of the wealthy social scene. Her hair is perfectly coifed and her clothes are always tailored and classic. Her friends are the same friends she had in high school. She was part of the “in crowd” and was never one to go against the grain. Willa, on the other hand, avoids the Walls of Water locals like the plague. She limits her small social realm to transplants and tourists who are just passing through town. She is perpetually wearing a uniform of jeans and boots, and her hair is wild and long. In high school she quietly kept to herself, but all the while she was secretly playing elaborate pranks. Willa wasn’t one to follow the given path. She revealed herself as the Walls of Water joker shortly before graduation and left town to live the adventurous life she’d always craved. But when her father died she came back to Walls of Water to look after her infirm, elderly grandmother. Willa worked very hard to put her wild ways behind her. She leads a small life and tries to make up for all the ways she must have disappointed her father and her grandmother as a young woman.

Stability was overrated. Crises and adventures, on the other hand, could actually teach you something.

When Paxton’s and Willa’s lives begin to cross paths their similarities begin to show themselves. Both Paxton and Willa are descended from old wealthy families, pillars of the Walls of Water society. In fact, their grandmothers were close friends when they were girls. Now Paxton and Willa both visit their grandmothers in the nursing home. Both Paxton and Willa are putting their own desires aside and trying to live up to their parents’ expectations, and both women are incredibly lonely.

Paxton’s family has been restoring The Blue Ridge Madame, a historic home that once belonged to Willa’s family. Just as the restoration is nearing completion, several artifacts and a body are discovered buried under a peach tree on the property. When the body is identified, it is also discovered that the buried man has a connection to both Paxton’s and Willa’s grandmothers. Willa and Paxton become closer as they unravel the mystery of the secret their grandmothers have been hiding for more than fifty years. Along the way they discover some truths about themselves as well.

Happiness is a risk. If you’re not a little scared, then you’re not doing it right.

Oh, Sarah Addison Allen, how I love you! Let me count the ways! When I read the book jacket for The Peach Keeper I thought that Paxton was a man’s name and that this story would be about a budding romance between the two main characters. It turns out that Paxton is a woman, and while there are budding romances in the story, they take a backseat to the relationship between the two women in the story. More than anything The Peach Keeper is a tribute to the bond between women, from friendships that have stood the test of time to the connection that seems to exist between women everywhere, even those who don’t know each other well yet.

Don’t underestimate us. You did before, and look where that got you.

The mystery of the man buried under the peach tree does drive the reader on somewhat, but this is no great whodunit. I was pretty sure I had unraveled the mystery of the buried body long before the characters did, although I wasn’t positive. However the story is not really that predictable, and here’s why. It’s like a puzzle. It’s easy to find the edges and put those together first. The reader might guess the ending, and she definitely knows the beginning, but the middle is still a complete mystery. So the reader might know whodunit, but she has no idea why, when, or how.

The author switches from one character’s perspective to the next. It’s a style I’ve really grown to love the more I read, and it also adds to the mystery because it limits the reader to only what the given character knows. Later it also adds suspense because the reader begins to know more than the character. One finds oneself thinking, “Oh, if she only knew the truth about….!”

Every life needs a little space. It leaves room for good things to enter.

I’m still trying to put my finger on why I enjoy Sarah Addison Allen’s books so much. There is always a subtle element of magic, and I think that has something to do with it. The magic the author describes is the kind that seems almost as if it could be true –at least to dreamers like me. But where the main characters in Garden Spells actually had magical talents, in The Peach Keeper the magic is even more understated. In fact, I almost decided not to put this book in the fantasy category. Magical things just seem to happen in the town of Walls of Water. The air changes when certain characters are near; a photograph moves of its own accord, and the people in the story don’t get too worked up about it either. They almost seem to see the magical happenings as commonplace.

The other reason I believe I love this author’s work is her ability to turn a phrase. I am an avid quote collector, and Sarah Addison Allen is a virtual quote machine. She has a way of putting little facts about life into simple yet beautiful expressions. I find myself marking pages over and over again, wanting to save all of my favorite quotes to write them down later.

Sarah Addison Allen calls her books “southern fried magical realism,” and her innate southern style is one of the other things I love about her. I’m a southern belle myself, and there is just a touch of that warm, comfortable feeling of home in her books. It’s hard to describe. Her books are usually set in the south, but it’s more than the name of the place that brings the south to mind. It’s in the way she describes the weather, the people, the architecture. The “southern-ness” is subtly sprinkled in, delicious to any reader, but particularly appealing to those who love the south.

There was a strange but universal understanding among women… It was part of their collective unconscious.

I love the idea of sisterhood that this story brings to mind. I think there’s some truth to the idea that women feel a connection and a responsibility to help one another. It’s refreshing to read a book where the romance takes a back seat to another type of relationship. So many books for women are so strongly rooted in romance, and I’m not complaining about that. I’m a romantic at heart, but it’s a nice change of pace. There are so many powerful human connections. Why limit yourself to just one?

We’re connected as women. It’s like a spider web. If one part of that web vibrates, if there’s trouble, we all know it. But most of the time we’re just too scared or selfish or insecure to help. But if we don’t help each other, who will?

I highly recommend this book to readers like me who love reading about magic, love, and human nature. The Peach Keeper would make an excellent book club book too! It’s full of wonderful discussion topics, and it's just a fun read in general, light and touching without being cheesy or sappy. I can’t wait to read more by this author, and I hope she keeps writing for a long, long time.