Orange on a Stoop: A Novel

Summary

An unlikely friendship between two spirited girls in rural Florida bridges social divides as they attempt to solve a decades-old mystery involving an old plantation house, an orange grove, and a legendary diamond—a richly atmospheric debut novel perfect for fans of Broken Country and Where the Crawdads Sing.

Hurston, Florida, 1956. Almost fourteen and tougher than she looks, Hallie Bentley is constantly on the wrong side of money and the wrong side of luck. But she dreams of taking her quiet, sensitive brother Reb and leaving the backwaters behind.

Hallie isn’t book smart, but she knows the lake and the surrounding marshes like the back of her hand. She knows the places that hang heavy with heat and secrets, the land that was once home to a thousand orange trees. And among the ghosts of those groves, she believes she will find Hurston’s legendary lost diamond.

At least, that’s the plan. It’s just that she and Reb don’t know where to start looking. Until the morning they meet Zadie hiding in a tree and find an orange sitting on the stoop of the long-abandoned Grove Keeper’s hut.

Zadie, a bookish girl from Boston, is visiting for the summer. She has dreams of her own, determined to attend college despite the obstacles barring Black women in the Jim Crow South. The unlikely trio soon finds that the legend of the diamond connects to an old plantation house and the tangled history of the family that once lived there.

Masterfully weaving two timelines and spanning four decades, Orange on a Stoop is a lush and transportive debut that explores the enduring power of friendship, the devastating weight of family secrets, and the courage it takes to break the cycles of the past.