It started with a love letter. In 2020, Morgan Jerkins was looking for ideas for a new novel when a curator at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem sent her a letter, written in 1863. The four-page letter was from an enslaved man, James Tate, living on a plantation in the South, to his wife, Olivia, who resided on another plantation. “The handwriting was beautiful, and in it he writes through an intermediary that his master wants him to forget about her and marry someone else, and he wants to reassure her that he’s not going to do it,” Jerkins says over Zoom from her Brooklyn living room, which is decorated with photos of Josephine Baker, Toni Morrison, and Zora Neale Hurston, whom she calls her literary godmother. “When I read that letter, I thought, there it is. I want to write a story about that. A love story. I don’t know how it’s going to end, but in the end, we win.”
The letter became a talisman for Jerkins as she worked on Zeal, a multigenerational saga and historical romance, out in April from Harper. The novel, set in post–Civil War America, during the Great Migration, and in the present day, centers on Black characters—some related by blood or marriage—who are linked across decades by a love letter written by a Black Union Army soldier, Harrison, to his beloved, Tirzah, whom he searches for after the war.
A self-described history nerd, Jerkins is a journalist, essayist, novelist, and the winner of two National Magazine Awards; her work focuses on Black history and people, particularly Black women, intersectional feminism, and ancestry. She’s the author of three previous books: her 2018 bestselling debut, This Will Be My Undoing, an essay collection about being Black, female, and feminist in white America; Wandering in Strange Lands (2020), in which she traces her ancestors’ journeys during the Great Migration; and the novel Caul Baby (2021). Together, her books have sold more than 208,000 copies, according to HarperCollins.
Jerkins says she worked overtime to make Zeal an authentic and immersive reading experience. She sought guidance from scholars and linguists of the African American tradition, poured over archival records and maps, and listened to old Blues music—by Bessie Smith, Mississippi John Hurt, and Son House—in order to write dialogue that rang true. “This book legitimately whooped my ass,” she admits. “I put a lot of pressure on myself.”
Born in 1992 in Somers Point, N.J., Jerkins was raised by her real estate agent mother; her mother and father, an OB-GYN, never married, which was a source of upset for her. “I grew up in the Black church, where marriage was everything,” she says. “It led to insecurities growing up.” A gifted student with an affinity for languages—she speaks six, including Russian and Japanese—Jerkins watched telenovelas in grade school to learn Spanish. “My mom would record them when I was at choir practice,” she recalls. “It got to a point where I was accelerating so quickly that she got me a tutor.”
Jerkins was bullied in high school, used writing as an outlet for her anger, and fell in love with the craft. In 2014, she received a BA in comparative literature from Princeton University (while there, she was twice rejected from the creative writing program) and an MFA in writing and literature from Bennington College in 2016. The author—who has taught at Columbia and Princeton—began her career writing online and quickly encountered trolls. “It’s exhausting as a Black woman to give your opinions and to be faced with the most disgusting threats,” she says. “Black woman rage is profitable, and there are people who’ve made their money and clout off of pissing people like me off. When I first started, I just wanted to be seen. I still do, but I’ll be damned if I’ll compromise my emotional safety in the process.”
Bad Feminist author Roxane Gay got to know Jerkins in 2017 through her essays and has enjoyed following her career. “It’s been interesting to watch Morgan’s growth,” Gay says. “I think of her as a strong intellectual voice in America right now. We need our best and brightest on the creative front lines. I’m incredibly glad to know that Morgan is writing in this time.”
Zeal is a layered novel that abounds with secrets and family drama—and, notes Jerkins’s agent, Sharon Pelletier, showcases the empathy and compassion that define Jerkins as a storyteller. The narrative opens in 2019, at an engagement party in Harlem, where Oliver, a doctor, gives his fiancée, Ardelia, a Civil War–era love letter that’s been in his family for generations. The novel then moves back in time to 1865 and takes up the story of star-crossed Harrison and Tirzah, who lead separate lives after the war—in Mississippi and Louisiana—unaware of the other’s whereabouts. Jerkins moves from 1865 to 1912 to 2021 to tell their story (Harrison gets involved with the Freedmen’s Bureau; Tirzah becomes a teacher) and that of their respective families. She examines the trauma of slavery and the resilience of the human spirit while exploring the enduring power of love against all odds.
Zeal has plenty of romance—and sex. “One of my early readers said this is a horny book, and it is,” Jerkins says. “As someone who’s a descendant of the enslaved, for most of my life I’ve heard people talk about sex in the form of rape, and it’s always the master and slave dynamic. I wanted to show the laughter, banter, sex, and elicit affairs, because these are human beings, even if the law didn’t deem them as such.”
Adenike Olanrewaju, Jerkins’s editor, describes the author as a city girl with a “Southern softness” who’s dedicated to showing the fullness of the Black experience. “Morgan just really loves Black people,” Olanrewaju says. “Zeal is a real demonstration of the immense fortitude and depth of the soul of Black people in this country, and Morgan really wanted to get the details right.”
Jerkins wrote Zeal over four years and during that process dealt with a bad breakup that deepened her understanding of herself and allowed her to mature as a woman and writer. “This is a grown woman book,” she says. “When you get to the point where you love yourself, and you’re proud of who you are, it changes the way you write.”
A spiritual person who strives to honor her ancestors and make her parents proud, Jerkins is eager to write more fiction. “I want my prose to be as vibrant as I hope I am,” she says, “and I want more than anything for my work to bring people together.” Whatever she writes will feature Black women front and center. “Black womanhood is always going to surprise me. As much as there is written, there are still things unwritten. That’s where I come in.”
Elaine Szewczyk’s writing has appeared in McSweeney’s and other publications. She’s the author of the novel I’m with Stupid.
