Palmares (Jones novel)

The story begins with seven year old Almeyda, then known as Almeydita, who grows up as a slave on a plantation in 1670s Brazil with her stern, stoic mother and eccentric grandmother. While on the plantation, Almeydita meets a free Black woman from Palmares, which is a city that is governed by freed and escaped slaves. Later in her life, Almeyda escapes from the plantation and makes her way to this free city of Palmares where she starts a new life and marries Martim Anninho. She later loses her husband when Palmares is suddenly destroyed in an attack. Almeyda then travels throughout Brazil in a quest to find her husband, meeting a variety of people throughout the way, some free, some enslaved, and others from a warrior or mystical background. Throughout her journey, she is guided by the serpent deity Iararaca and also, briefly guided by the Mystic Luiza Cosme.

Writing in the New York Times, author Robert Jones Jr. praised the novel as a grand return for Jones, stating: "Mercy, this story shimmers. Shakes. Wails. Moves to rhythms long forgotten. Chants in incantations highly forbidden. It is a story woven with extraordinary complexity, depth and skill; in many ways: holy."^[4] Writing for The Guardian, author Yara Rodrigues Fowler praised Jones for deftly exploring unstable social constructs such as gender and race. Fowler also stated: "Palmares reinvents 17th-century Black Brazil in all its multiplicity, beauty, humanity and chaos. It is a once-in-a-lifetime work of literature, the kind that changes your understanding of the world."^[5]