Yah Yah Scholfield’s On Sundays She Picked Flowers marks her impressive debut. It is a novel about perseverance, generational abuse, race, and shapeshifting creatures. It is part horror, part southern gothic and has the surreal, magical feel of a fairy tale. It is an arresting, powerful debut, in other words.
In this sinister and surreal Southern Gothic debut, a woman escapes into the uncanny woods of southern Georgia and must contend with ghosts, haints, and most dangerous of all, the truth about herself.
When Judith Rice fled her childhood home, she thought she’d severed her abusive mother’s hold on her. She didn’t have a plan or destination, just a desperate need to escape. Drawn to the forests of southern Georgia, Jude finds shelter in a house as haunted by its violent history as she is by her own.
Jude embraces the eccentricities of the dilapidated house, soothing its ghosts and haints, honoring its blood-soaked land. And over the next thirteen years, Jude blossoms from her bitter beginnings into a wisewoman, a healer.
But her hard-won peace is threatened when an enigmatic woman shows up on her doorstep. The woman is beautiful but unsettling, captivating but uncanny. Ensnared by her desire for this stranger, Jude is caught off guard by brutal urges suddenly simmering beneath her skin. As the woman stirs up memories of her escape years ago, Jude must confront the calls of violence rooted in her bloodline.
Haunting and thought-provoking, On Sunday She Picked Flowers explores retribution, family trauma, and the power of building oneself back up after breaking down.
Judith (Jude) Rice was raised in the early 20th Century in an abusive household with her mother and knowing very little beyond the walls of her house except for her two aunts. We meet her in 1965 when she’s 41 years old and despite that seemingly adult age, her mother definitely treats her as if those digits are reversed, if not younger. Unable and unwilling to suffer the continued abuse, Jude kills her mother and flees, finding solace in an abandoned house in the Okefenokee woods of Georgia. Don’t worry, that’s not much of a spoiler since it happens very, very early in the novel. Knowing very little of the world at large and having survived years of abuse, Jude has little fear of what may be in the woods, from bugs to plants to the typical (and atypical) woodland creatures.
It turns out the house in which she settles – which becomes her home – once was a plantation house, so the horrors of slavery are in the bones of the house. Jude learns the house has a name for itself – Candle – and very much communicates with her. Jude eventually makes peace with the living house and becomes a healer, learning more about the environment around the house. Jude starts leaving food out for the creatures of the forest, in essence making a pact of peace with them, particularly the large bear she thinks she hears.
While the novel is most definitely horror, I also felt it had the feel of a fable. Despite Jude’s departure from her home being birthed in matricide, she finds a sense of normalcy in her home in the woods. Just when Jude feels comfortable and settled into her woodland home, an enigmatic woman who calls herself Nemoira comes knocking on her door. Initially, this woman has challenges communicating, but soon enough, she and Jude find their rhythm. Jude allows this woman to stay in her home and eventually finds it impossible to fight her romantic feelings and the two develop a rhythm of their own.
This novel can also fit into the folk horror vein of horror stories/novels. The woods in which Jude makes her home has some spookiness, an aura if you will. With the powerful romantic elements, especially since the romance is between one human and a character that can wear the guise of a human, the fable-like feel of the story is very powerful. Folk/fairy tales, myth, and fable often feature a romance between human and inhuman creatures and Scholfield effectively brings that to the fold in On Sundays She Picked Flowers. Like the darkest of fairy tales, there’s an element of stark violence that characterizes who Jude is and the story itself.
Another very powerful element of the novel is Scholfield’s voice. This is a novel that really gave me a unique perspective while also making me feel wrapped in the prose and story. Playing hand-in-hand with Scholfield’s engaging voice is her ability to give the novel a wonderful sense of place. The woods where Jude makes her home has an otherworldly, almost ethereal feel. Like a place outside of the “real world” in the best way.
Scholfield tackles some very powerful taboos in On Sundays She Picked Flowers, one of which I’ve alluded to while others are best left for the reader to discover. Scholfield very much has an ability to jar the reader with several moments or revelations, especially when a sense of comfort seems possible for Jude. Those moments are extremely effective and don’t invalidate anything that has been revealed earlier in the story, but throws some of what we assumed in a different light, to say the least. It is a neat trick for a writer to pull off and Scholfield most certainly does.
Originally published by a small press in 2022, Saga Press smartly bought this book to bring this powerful story to a wider audience.
Highly recommended
© 2026 Rob H. Bedford
Hardcover | Saga Press
January 2026 | 240 pages
Author substack: https://fluoresensitive.substack.com/
Excerpt: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/On-Sundays-She-Picked-Flowers/Yah-Yah-Scholfield/9781668091210
Review copy courtesy of the publisher, Saga Press Books
