The Peach Keeper: A Novel

A Letter from Author Sarah Addison Allen
She put a penny on her windowsill and cracked the window, because her grandmother once said that ghosts often forget they’re ghosts and will go after money, but if they get close enough to an open window, the night air will suck them out.
--Chapter Eight, The Peach Keeper

The original title of The Peach Keeper was God Eats Peaches, which I took from the old saying, “When God eats peaches, He saves the pit.” I had a cousin who would never throw away a peach pit based on that saying. She thought it was bad luck. My family is full of strange Southern superstitions. My great-aunt never liked for company to come in through one door and leave through another because she said that meant the preacher would visit.

How many of us grew up seeing our mothers throw a pinch of salt over their shoulders when salt was spilled? How many of us remember when our grandmothers whispered that a bird tapping on a window meant someone was going to die? We took these things on trembling faith as children, believing them to be real because everything was real back then. Everything had possibilities. So how do we explain, with our skeptical grown-up natures, why we still make an X in the air when a black cat passes. Why we still have to eat something in the morning before we will tell someone about our bad dreams. Why we still worry about umbrellas being opened indoors.

What is it about superstitions that stay with us, that encourage us to pass them on? Flights of fancy, maybe. Or nostalgia. Or maybe the power of the unknown is just that strong. We can’t help but think: What if it’s true? What if it just might be true? So we take an ounce of prevention instead of a pound of cure. We knock on wood and avoid ladders and never break mirrors. Just in case.

Sarah Addison Allen is the product of a newspaper man and a former debutante who pierced her nose and dyed her hair red at the age of fifty. Taught the fine art of table place settings at an early age, she has never quite shaken off her inherited urge to rebel. She lives in the American South, where her novels are set.