Zeal: A Sweeping Multi-Generational Epic of Love, Legacy, and Cosmic Reconciliation from Reconstruction to Harlem - Hardcover

Jerkins, Morgan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0063234084 ISBN 13: 9780063234086

Publisher: Harper, 2025

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 work of African American historical fiction 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. In a sweeping dual timeline narrative, 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, this powerful family saga is both a story of how one generation’s choices reverberate through the years and an indelible portrait of an enduring love. Zeal is a must-read.

About this title

About the Author

Morgan Jerkins is the author of Caul Baby, Wandering in Strange Lands, and the New York Times bestseller This Will Be My Undoing. Jerkins has taught at Columbia and Princeton Universities, and has written for The New Yorker, the New York Times, The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, and the Guardian, among many others. She lives in Brooklyn.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harper
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0063234084
• ISBN 13: 9780063234086
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 416