Yah Yah Scholfield’s On Sundays She Picked Flowers marks her spectacular debut. It’s a novel about perseverance, generational abuse, race, and shapeshifting creatures. It’s half horror, half southern gothic and has the surreal, magical really feel of a fairy story. It’s an arresting, highly effective debut, in different phrases.
On this sinister and surreal Southern Gothic debut, a girl escapes into the uncanny woods of southern Georgia and should deal with ghosts, haints, and most harmful of all, the reality about herself.
When Judith Rice fled her childhood dwelling, she thought she’d severed her abusive mom’s maintain on her. She didn’t have a plan or vacation spot, only a determined want to flee. Drawn to the forests of southern Georgia, Jude finds shelter in a home as haunted by its violent historical past as she is by her personal.
Jude embraces the eccentricities of the dilapidated home, soothing its ghosts and haints, honoring its blood-soaked land. And over the following 13 years, Jude blossoms from her bitter beginnings right into a wisewoman, a healer.
However her hard-won peace is threatened when an enigmatic girl reveals up on her doorstep. The girl is gorgeous however unsettling, fascinating however uncanny. Ensnared by her want for this stranger, Jude is caught off guard by brutal urges all of a sudden simmering beneath her pores and skin. As the lady stirs up reminiscences of her escape years in the past, Jude should confront the calls of violence rooted in her bloodline.
Haunting and thought-provoking, On Sunday She Picked Flowers explores retribution, household trauma, and the ability of constructing oneself again up after breaking down.
Judith (Jude) Rice was raised within the early 20th Century in an abusive family along with her mom and figuring out little or no past the partitions of her home apart from her two aunts. We meet her in 1965 when she’s 41 years previous and regardless of that seemingly grownup age, her mom positively treats her as if these digits are reversed, if not youthful. Unable and unwilling to endure the continued abuse, Jude kills her mom and flees, discovering solace in an deserted home within the Okefenokee woods of Georgia. Don’t fear, that’s not a lot of a spoiler because it occurs very, very early within the novel. Figuring out little or no of the world at massive and having survived years of abuse, Jude has little concern of what could also be within the woods, from bugs to crops to the everyday (and atypical) woodland creatures.
It seems the home through which she settles – which turns into her dwelling – as soon as was a plantation home, so the horrors of slavery are within the bones of the home. Jude learns the home has a reputation for itself – Candle – and really a lot communicates along with her. Jude ultimately makes peace with the residing home and turns into a healer, studying extra in regards to the atmosphere round the home. Jude begins leaving meals out for the creatures of the forest, in essence making a pact of peace with them, significantly the big bear she thinks she hears.
Whereas the novel is most positively horror, I additionally felt it had the texture of a fable. Regardless of Jude’s departure from her dwelling being birthed in matricide, she finds a way of normalcy in her dwelling within the woods. Simply when Jude feels snug and settled into her woodland dwelling, an enigmatic girl who calls herself Nemoira comes knocking on her door. Initially, this girl has challenges speaking, however quickly sufficient, she and Jude discover their rhythm. Jude permits this girl to remain in her dwelling and ultimately finds it unimaginable to battle her romantic emotions and the 2 develop a rhythm of their very own.
This novel may match into the folks horror vein of horror tales/novels. The woods through which Jude makes her dwelling has some spookiness, an aura if you’ll. With the highly effective romantic components, particularly for the reason that romance is between one human and a personality that may put on the guise of a human, the fable-like really feel of the story may be very highly effective. People/fairy tales, fantasy, and fable usually characteristic a romance between human and inhuman creatures and Scholfield successfully brings that to the fold in On Sundays She Picked Flowers. Just like the darkest of fairy tales, there’s a component of stark violence that characterizes who Jude is and the story itself.
One other very highly effective aspect of the novel is Scholfield’s voice. It is a novel that actually gave me a singular perspective whereas additionally making me really feel wrapped within the prose and story. Enjoying hand-in-hand with Scholfield’s participating voice is her potential to offer the novel a beautiful sense of place. The woods the place Jude makes her dwelling has an otherworldly, virtually ethereal really feel. Like a spot outdoors of the “actual world” in one of the simplest ways.
Scholfield tackles some very highly effective taboos in On Sundays She Picked Flowers, considered one of which I’ve alluded to whereas others are greatest left for the reader to find. Scholfield very a lot has a capability to jar the reader with a number of moments or revelations, particularly when a way of consolation appears potential for Jude. These moments are extraordinarily efficient and don’t invalidate something that has been revealed earlier within the story, however throws a few of what we assumed in a distinct mild, to say the least. It’s a neat trick for a author to tug off and Scholfield most definitely does.
Initially printed by a small press in 2022, Saga Press well purchased this guide to deliver this highly effective story to a wider viewers.
Extremely really helpful
© 2026 Rob H. Bedford
Hardcover | Saga Press
January 2026 | 240 pages
Writer substack: https://fluoresensitive.substack.com/
Excerpt: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/On-Sundays-She-Picked-Flowers/Yah-Yah-Scholfield/9781668091210
Overview copy courtesy of the writer, Saga Press Books
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