Zeal - by Morgan Jerkins (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Named a Most Anticipated Book by Washington Post, People, Time

"A beautiful tale." --Jason Reynolds, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Twenty-four Seconds from Now

The New York Times bestselling author of This Will Be My Undoing and Caul Baby returns with an epic, multi-generational novel that illuminates the legacy of slavery and the power of romantic love.

Harlem, 2019. Ardelia and Oliver are hosting their engagement party. As the guests get ready to leave, he hands her a love letter on a yellowing, crumbling piece of paper . . .

Natchez, 1865. Discharged from the Union Army as a free man after the war's end, Harrison returns to Mississippi to reunite with the woman he loves, Tirzah. Upon his arrival at the Freedmen's Bureau, though, he catches the eye of a woman working there, who's determined to thwart his efforts to find his beloved. After tragedy strikes, Harrison resigns himself to a life with her.

Meanwhile in Louisiana, the newly free Tirzah is teaching at a freedmen's school, and discovers an advertisement in the local paper looking for her. Though she knows Harrison must have placed it, and longs to find him, the risks of fleeing are too great, and Tirzah chooses the life of seeming security right in front of her.

Spanning over a hundred and fifty years, Morgan Jerkins's extraordinary novel intertwines the stories of these star-crossed lovers and their descendants. As Tirzah's family moves across the country during the Great Migration, they challenge authority with devastating consequences, while the legacy of heartbreak and loss continues on in the lives of Harrison's progeny.

When Ardelia meets Oliver, she finds his family's history is as full of secrets and omissions as her own. Could their connection be a cosmic reconciliation satisfying the unfulfilled desires of their ancestors, or will the weight of the past, present and future tear them apart?

Sweeping, textured, and meticulously researched, Zeal is both a story of how one generation's choices reverberate through the years and an indelible portrait of an enduring love.

Review Quotes

"In this arresting and riveting love story, Morgan Jerkins lays bare the power of ancestral inheritance and the power to escape it. Zeal steeps us in rich Black history while taking us breathlessly through a contemporary world, braiding together the two seamlessly. I'll never think of love letters the same way." - Bridgett M Davis, author of Love, Rita and The World According To Fannie Davis

"There's always something profound about love in the midst of the historical gauntlet of race. Something powerful about knowing it continues to persist through generations of opposition, though not at all unscathed. What Jerkins does in Zeal is examine that, while asking, what happens if the descendants born of a love-torn people were able to finally live in it, wholly? For their ancestors. And what if that love story felt more like destiny than happenstance. What a beautiful tale." - Jason Reynolds, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Twenty-Four Seconds from Now

"Zeal is a layered novel that abounds with secrets and family drama" - Publishers Weekly

"A compelling portrait of Black love. . . . Zeal is a page-turner that will teach readers a few things about our past." - Boston Globe

"Jerkins's sweeping novel blends historical fiction with romance to explore survival, identity, and the kind of love that endures." - The Skimm

"This is literary historical fiction at its finest." - Scary Mommy

"A multigenerational exploration of slavery's legacy and the power of Black joy and Black love." - Kirkus Reviews

"Powerful....Jerkins is an excellent writer and the story will move your heart as you follow the star-crossed Harrison and Tirzah as they search for love."

- Montecito Journal

"(A) great, sweeping novel of love, loss and family and it's one of those books you do not want to put down.... (O)ne of the best books of the year so far..." - Red Carpet Crash

Named "Most Anticipated" by TIME, People, Publishers Weekly, and Ms. Magazine * A "Best Book of the Month" by TIME, Washington Post, Town & Country, New York Post, and Book Riot * A "Summer Read" by Deep South Magazine

"If ever there was a time for textured art that takes the complicated, often comically ironic, intoxicating love lives of the enslaved serious, it is now. It is Zeal. Morgan Jerkins made it. We can rejoice. Zeal is the rare buoyant and absolutely sturdy work that meets the reader where we are, and refuses to coddle. It is faithful fiction that should have readers and writers talking about this book forever." - Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy