THE FALLEN FRUIT

An intriguing hybrid of historical romance and fantasy suggests that going back in time may be one way to weed out generational trauma.

“My family tree has poisoned roots,” Cecily Bridge-Davis announces at the start of this haunting saga about the “curse” of time travel. It is May 1964 and Cecily, an African American professor of history, has come into possession of her father’s 65-acre patch of Virginia farmland. When she leaves her Tennessee home to see what’s there, she finds an empty cabin, a spool made from a maple tree, and a family Bible with a yellowed flyleaf listing the names and birth dates of every Bridge family member born on the farm from the 1760s to the 1920s. She also hears from an elderly local about a long-ago murder-kidnapping implicating one of her ancestors. Which turns out to be slightly less shocking than discovering the reason why some of those ancestors vanished for decades: One Bridge offspring in each generation is somehow transported back in time. She also finds a map with locations of strange containers along with a list of “Bridge Family Rules” for time travel: “Never interfere with past events.” “Always carry your freedom papers.” “Search for the survival packs in the orchard.” “Do not speak to strangers unless absolutely necessary.” Cecily presses her inquiry into the family’s temporally peripatetic history all the way back to the 18th century and such precursors as Luke, whose tumble through time takes him from freedom to slavery and eventually into the Continental Army, where he undergoes the travails of Valley Forge. After her forays in the library for more information, Cecily herself is compelled to leave 1964 for 1911, where she takes a different identity and eventually gets a teaching job in circa 1924 Washington, D.C., where she tells one of her students, a young woman named Amelia Bridge, that they’re related and that “Millie” must make the most important time jaunt of their shared family history. Sometimes all this gets even more complicated than it reads here. But Madison shows considerable skill and narrative control. To her credit, it’s hard not to be reminded of Octavia Butler’s Kindred, as well as The Time Traveler’s Wife and some of Ray Bradbury’s time-displacement stories.

A crafty, page-turning spin on chronicling Black family history.