Treeborne by Caleb Johnson

When it came out last year in hardback, this novel was an Honorable Mention for the Southern Book Prize, one of Southern Living’s “Best New Books,” and one of Library Journal’s “Books to Get Now.” The setting is a fictional town of Elberta, in the hill country of North Alabama, where the author grew up, not the real town of Elberta, Alabama, near the Gulf Coast. The protagonist is Janie Treeborne, who is born to tend the peaches in her family’s orchard. She tells the story of her granddaddy, her grandmother, her aunt, her African-American lover, and the whole community. "I can’t remember the last time I read a book I wish so much I’d written. Treeborne is beautiful, and mythic in ways I would never have been able to imagine...I can’t say enough about this book."―Daniel Wallace. "In his debut novel, Johnson has conjured a stunning account of the Treeborne family of Elberta, Alabama, creating an immersive sense of both time and place as he probes the memories and resentments that linger