Zeal

(Hardback, Large Print Edition)

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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 wars end, Harrison returns to Mississippi to reunite with the woman he loves, Tirzah. Upon his arrival at the Freedmens Bureau, though, he catches the eye of a woman working there, whos 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 freedmens 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 Jerkinss 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 of the legacy of heartbreak and loss continues on in the lives of Harrison's progeny.

When Ardelia meets Oliver, she finds his familys 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 generations choices reverberate through the years and an indelible portrait of an enduring love.

Reviews

"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 multigenerational exploration of slaverys legacy and the power of Black joy and Black love. Kirkus Reviews