Zeal
A Novel
-
- $18.99
Publisher Description
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 of 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.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Morgan Jerkins explores how the impact of one couple’s love cuts across time in this deeply affecting novel. As an engagement present, Oliver gives his new fiancée, Ardelia, a letter that has been passed down through his family. It’s written by a formerly enslaved woman named Tirzah and addressed to her beloved Harrison, whose whereabouts are unknown to her. Jerkins jumps between the post–Civil War American South, the early 20th-century Midwest, and present-day New York to follow the surprising impact of the letter on subsequent generations. In the expanded story of Tirzah, Harrison, and their descendants, progress comes slowly and only through the most determined efforts. But ultimately, this is a touching, multifaceted love story that isn’t afraid to let longing and passion walk hand in hand with pain and disappointment. Zeal celebrates the bonds of strength that are created through the bonds of love.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Jerkins (Caul Baby) delivers a plaintive story of a present-day Black couple and their ancestors in the post–Civil War South. In 1865, Union soldier Harrison returns to the plantation where he was enslaved in Natchez, Miss., to look for his beloved Tirzah. Unable to find her, he seeks help from the Freedmen's Bureau. Meanwhile, Tirzah, who is living in Louisiana and working as a schoolteacher, writes letters to Harrison and sends them to the bureau, but they're delayed in reaching him. In a parallel narrative set in 2019 New York City, physician Oliver Benjamin gives his fiancée, Ardelia Gibbs, a family heirloom, one of Tirzah's letters to Harrison. After one of Oliver's patients dies, he retreats emotionally, and Ardelia spends her free time digging through her own family tree, leading to some life-changing discoveries about her and Oliver's ancestors. Jerkins meticulously links Ardelia's and Oliver's stories with those of Tirzah and Harrison, uncovering secrets held by the couple's families and revealing what happened to Tirzah's letters and how one of them managed to be passed down through Oliver's family. The result is a memorable tale of love and legacy.
