On Sundays She Picked Flowers
Lone Women meets Sorrowland in this sinister and surreal Southern Gothic debut about a woman who escapes her family home to the uncanny woods of Southern Georgia and must now contend with haints, ghosts, and a literal beast in the woods.
When Judith Rice ran away from the house she grew up in, she thought she severed her abusive mother’s hold on her. Seventeen years later, she’s made a home for herself in a cottage secluded deep in the forests of northern Georgia. Jude believes she’s settled into a quiet life.
But when an enigmatic woman shows up on her doorstep, Jude’s tentative peace is threatened by the stranger’s presence. The woman is beautiful but unsettling, captivating but uncanny. Caught between her desire for this woman and the violence that seems to simmer just beneath her skin, Jude’s past and present clash as the woman stirs up memories that force her to reckon with the violence of her escape years ago.
Haunting and thought-provoking, On Sunday She Picked Flowers is a propulsive debut exploring retribution, family trauma, and the power of building oneself back up after breaking down.
Reviews
"Through their vivid, intoxicating prose, Schofield creates a visceral tale infused with feminine rage and the inherited trauma from being Black in America that is beautiful, bloody, and gory. VERDICT: This evocative work that’s lush as a humid Georgia summer night will stick with readers for a long time. Fans of Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Rivers Solomon’s Sorrowland, or Tananarive Due will find themselves transfixed."
"On Sundays, She Picked Flowers is harrowing, yet somehow ends on a hopeful note. Readers won’t be able to put it down."
"On Sundays She Picked Flowers by Yah Yah Scholfied is not a light read, packed with horrors (both real life and fictional), but ultimately hopeful. There are few books that linger with me long after reading, but this is one of those novels. A story about pain, but also about reclaiming joy and finding something beautiful in the aftermath. On Sundays She Picked Flowers is one of the best horror novels I have read in recent times and is highly recommended."
"Blossoming with vibrant violence, dramatic decay, and harrowing hauntings, this is an unruly narrative, one that is planted in a firm structure of recognizable horror classics, yet breaks free of its constraints... Never has horror hurt and hypnotized in such a fashion. Gripping, unique, and damn impressive, On Sundays She Picked Flowers is certainly a literary horror classic."
"[S]lickly stylish and graphically cannibalistic...Scholfield’s prose is impressive... Caitlin Starling fans will enjoy this gory mix of toxic sapphic romance and body horror."Publishers Weekly
"A love story covered in blood....On Sundays She Picked Flowers is an absolutely beautiful, complicated read, and I swear to all things great and good if I don’t see Scholfield’s career skyrocket after this, I’m going to riot."
"A violent, bloody page-turner that explores unsettling themes, but it is also a highly literary tale that comments on the vagaries of romance and the quest to become one’s authentic self. Scholfield is a gifted writer."
"With care, sensitivity and a great deal of blood, Scholfield tells a story that’s as haunting as it is cathartic, as beautiful as it is devastating. On Sundays She Picked Flowers is the kind of horror novel that shows just how powerful a literary force the genre can be and proves Scholfield a talent to watch."
"Yah Yah Scholfield has written one of the most visceral, intense, brutal, and yet honest, works of horror I have read in a long time. On Sundays She Picked Flowers is about the trauma of family, relationships, and the monsters we let in when we fail to confront what wounds us. You will devour this book—unless it devours you first."P. Djèlí Clark, award-winning author of Ring Shout
"On Sundays She Picked Flowers marks the debut of a ferociously talented writer. Yah Yah Scholfield writes with insight, beauty and the wildness of real art. This is a love story, a healing story, a tale of hard-won survival. Real, in the way all good fairy tales are."Victor LaValle, bestselling author of Lone Women
"Atmospheric and engrossing. On Sundays is written with the same dark love and shadow magic it explores. An essential debut."Johnny Compton, author of The Spite House
“ON SUNDAYS SHE PICKED FLOWERS is a beauty of a debut. Scholfield’s sharp prose effortlessly carries scenes of sweetness and brutality. It grabbed me from the first page, did not let me go till the final one, and I can still feel it lingering long after the end. This is the kind of novel I crave as a reader.”Erin E. Adams, author of Jackal and One of You
"On Sundays She Picked Flowers is a vibrant and visceral debut, in both the literal and metaphorical senses. Scholfield's novel digs deep on themes like monstrosity, queer desire, and the deep-running legacies of trauma and violence that have shaped Black life in the American South—it's an absolute stunner of a book."Lee Mandelo, author of Summer Sons
"One of the best books of the year... The question of whether or not people can change takes on new (and literal) dimension here, and the way Scholfield handles that exploration is a marvel."
"On Sundays She Picked Flowers is a luminous, weighty Southern Gothic imbued with suffering, rage, secrets, and isolation... an arresting, astounding exploration of inherited trauma, retribution, and the fortitude necessary to continue on."
"[A]n achingly beautiful and haunting story...On Sunday She Picked Flowers feels like in takes place in a liminal space between fantasy and cold reality, the “real” world, and the world of the forest. While reading it, I always felt like I was just on the edge of a dream."
“A Southern Gothic horror novel that’s equal parts bloody and lyrical, it carves a new space in the genre... a rare reading experience. It’s a Southern Gothic for a new era, one that uses the genre’s tools, hauntings, grotesquerie, a deep sense of place, to dissect the very real horrors of inherited pain and the brutal, beautiful fight to build a self from the wreckage.”
"An often brutal but beautiful horror novel, On Sundays She Picked Flowers is a Southern Gothic novel that takes classic tropes and makes them new."Dazed
"A beautifully written story of survival and redemption, Yah Yah Scholfield’s weird, devastating and brutal Southern Gothic debut is a rollercoaster of emotions, both monstrous and beautiful."
"An arresting, powerful debut."