This Here Is Love: A Novel

Three people―two enslaved, one indentured―live beside each other, fighting, and sometimes failing, to be more than their pasts say they should be. 1690s, Tidewater, Virginia. Bless, born into slavery and taken by her masters to toil in the house, faces her mother’s fury, learning that cruelty can come from any side. David, an enslaved child of a freed father, dreams of the promise of liberty made to him. Jack, an impoverished Scots-Irish boy, sails to America to be indentured but, in the hellish crossing, finds his hopes fracturing. Yet, somehow, they all will stake a claim to love. Hurston-Wright Award winner Princess Joy L. Perry tells us a previously unheard story―one in which characters must carve out choices from the narrowest of circumstances and confront heartrending questions: How far would you go to protect your children from enslavement? How to create a lasting family after being torn from your own? What to value more: a hard-won opportunity or your humanity? This Here Is Love is an unforgettable story from an astonishing new voice.