Zeal

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.

"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“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