RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewSurrounding Gayl Jones is an aura of violet light ... Palmares is an odyssey, one woman’s search first for a place, and then for a person ... Jones writes in ancestral tongues, shifting between languages, going from dialogue to dream-speak, fever to prophesy, sometimes midsentence ... This book takes patience. Time sometimes stretches, sometimes collapses in on itself ... Jones’s writing is most potent when it blends the ethereal and the corporeal, as if it comes from some celestial place ... Her oracular integrity comes into question, however, when she introduces characters who are lesbian or gender nonconforming. ... What can explain these scenes? They are filtered through Almeyda’s eyes, and we learn early on that on the plantation, Almeyda has been raised Catholic, presumably to believe homosexuality is a sin ... Mercy, this story shimmers. Shakes. Wails. Moves to rhythms long forgotten. Chants in incantations highly forbidden. It is a story woven with extraordinary complexity, depth and skill; in many ways: holy ... The story ends not exactly in medias res, but on a beat that begs continuation. This feeling of masterpiece-in-and-as-process is deliberate, and genius.