Book Review: On Sundays She Picked Flowers by Yah Yah Scholfield

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Covering 25 years, On Sundays She Picked Flowers opens in autumn 1965, when 41-year-old Judith “Jude” Rice finally escapes the bonds of her ancestral Westmoor home in Vine City, Georgia — a restrictive, abusive, prison-like environment controlled by her mother, Ernestine “Nessie” Rice — and strikes out on her own. She settles in southern Georgia near a town called Whitnee, in an abandoned plantation house she christens “Candle,” nestled within the eerie Okefenokee Swamp, where she remains for 13 years, becoming one with the blood-soaked land and blossoming from bitter girl into peaceful healer and wisewoman. But after a mysterious and unsettling woman appears at her door, Jude feels dormant desires and brutal urges awaken, along with buried memories of her escape. Can she confront her bloodline’s violent impulses and, most perilous of all, contend with the truth about herself?

On Sundays She Picked Flowers is a luminous, weighty Southern Gothic imbued with suffering, rage, secrets, and isolation. The unique structure moves between key points of view, while the narrative shines a spotlight on the generational trauma of slavery, anti-Black violence, and familial strife, along with distinctive supernatural/paranormal elements and spiritual practices, forming a cathartic and powerful story of monstrous love and nuclear families, rigid confinement and horrific truths, unending cruelty and unspeakable brutality, unattainable freedom and unrelenting past, and appalling racism and repellant misogyny — a harrowing saga of mothers and daughters, sisters and histories, endurance and perseverance, desire and acceptance.

The writing is gorgeous and sumptuous, particularly in its descriptions of nature and food, the former comforting and restorative, the latter exquisite and mouthwatering, evoking shades of Michael McDowell’s Southern Gothic classics Blackwater and The Elementals, where cuisine and daily routine also serve to soothe against backdrops of horror. Fury and regret, decay and self-loathing, extreme body horror and the hell of life lived inside the prison of one’s mind permeate the novel, juxtaposed against the balm of the great outdoors, solitude, and self-government. Traditional religion and society are unforgiving, while hoodoo serves as a fascinating anchor and backdrop, producing a riveting and uncommon take on love and haunted houses, all stained with undying echoes of history and haints.

The plotline is littered with numerous instances of malice, self-harm, and acts so savage, gory, devastating, and visceral, they sicken and chill straight to the core, leaving the reader so appalled, so unequivocally disturbed and uncomfortable, it’s a clinic in fearless, masterful storytelling that goes there, making it truly overwhelming and difficult to imagine surviving amid such ghastly realities — an arresting, astounding exploration of inherited trauma, retribution, and the fortitude necessary to continue on.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster/Saga Press for providing an eARC of this incredible forthcoming title (scheduled for publication on January 27, 2026) for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

❤Amanda

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