The Free Black Women's Library celebrates ZEAL by Morgan Jenkins

The Free Black Women's Library is a social art project, literary hub, social site, Black Feminist archive, and community care space that features a free store,period pantry, backyard garden,virtual reading club, weekly book swap, free public programs and a collection of over five thousand books written by Black women and Black nonbinary folks.
This project was started and is run by artist OlaRonke Akinmowo in 2015.
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Join us as we celebrate the release of ZEAL, a new novel by bestselling author Morgan Jenkins with a book launch party featuring a discussion between the author and award winning writer Jacqueline Woodson.
Copies of the book wil lbe available on site for purchase via Cafe Con LIbros.

About ZEAL:
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.

Host or Publisher The Free Black Women's Library