Can we fight fate, or are our stories already written? Shawntelle Madison’s new historical fantasy The Fallen Fruit follows a time traveling family cursed to lose children every generation, and one woman’s attempts to change the past.
The Summary
In 1964, Cecily Bridge-Davis inherits sixty-five acres from her Aunt Hilda. Upon reaching the old Bridge Family farm, she discovers her family suffers from a curse. Each generation, one child born from a Bridge man will fall back in time before their twenty-seventh birthday. They can’t control when they’ll fall or how far back, so Bridge children are taught to always carry freedom papers and to be prepared to seek safety should they suddenly find themselves decades in the past.
Cecily’s father died when she was young, so she never learned about the curse. But as her father’s only child, she knows she’s doomed to fall, leaving her husband and their two sons. With only a few months left before her twenty-seventh birthday, Cecily seeks to discover all that she can about the curse in the hope that she can change fate once she lands in the past.
The novel weaves through time, following different members of the Bridge family: Amelia, a hopeful medical student who loses her brother to the curse in 1920; Luke, the first Bridge son to fall; Rebecca, who watches her neighbors’ children disappear one by one and dreads the day one of her own will vanish; and Emily Bridge, Luke’s mother. Cecily ultimately makes a discovery and sets into motion a plan to change her fate — but rewriting the past is not as simple as it seems.
My Review
Madison’s historical fiction debut is undoubtedly a success. She has crafted a variety of interesting characters to show us different facets of the Bridge family curse. Even with limited space granted to each of the family members, Madison is able to paint their hopes and fears vividly on the page.
The Fallen Fruit also provides a look into the lives led by free Black Americans in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. I must admit that this was an area in which I was almost entirely ignorant — I had never even heard of free Black people living in the colonies before the Revolutionary War. One of the rules the Bridges develop in response to the curse is to always carry freedom papers as protection in case they fall back in time. Madison touches on the ways in which this tactic does and doesn’t work in the family’s favor.
Additionally, when Bridge children start to go missing in 1817, many of the adults initially fear that they’ve been kidnapped and enslaved despite the family’s free status. Even with documentation, the threat of slavery hangs over the Bridge family farm.
Later in the book, a character who grew up after slavery was abolished in the States witnesses enslaved people coming off a ship for the first time and interacts with formerly enslaved characters. It’s an emotional experience to read about, and goes to show how close this violent history remains to Black Americans, even though our country is now separated from the practice of slavery by over a century.
Another aspect of history I was introduced to in this novel was free Black soldiers who fought in the Revolutionary War. Madison writes in her author’s note that this was the original inspiration for the book, and although it ultimately ends up being a relatively small part of the plot, I found it interesting to read about. The descriptions of Luke’s time in the army are some of the most detailed in the novel, and Madison’s investment in this history is evident.
Fate is a central theme of the book. Once Cecily learns about the curse, she is desperate to prevent it so that she won’t be parted from her family in 1964. In an attempt to stop the curse, she breaks one of the Bridge family rules: Never interfere with past events. I found the exploration of fate to be very well executed — I can’t say much more without giving away spoilers, but suffice it to say, Madison pulls all her strings together at the end into a messy but satisfying knot.
My one complaint about the book is that Cecily sometimes seemed able to find information a bit too easily. As a history professor, she surely would have the skills to dig up her family’s history and try to learn more about the curse. However, she sometimes was able to learn details that felt too specific to have survived almost 150 years, and discovered answers to her specific questions seemingly with little resistance. These moments took me out of the narrative, as I wasn’t quite able to suspend my disbelief enough to find it plausible that Cecily could learn that Luke whittled spools for his first love and gave them to her when they parted ways when both of those things happened without any other witnesses and aren’t experiences either of the characters likely would have written down.
Overall I thoroughly enjoyed The Fallen Fruit and recommend it to readers who enjoy historical fiction and/or time travel stories. I rated it 4 stars.
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