Princess Joy L. Perry, "This Here Is Love" (W.W. Norton, 2025)

New Books in Literature · Jan 31, 2026 · 49m

Three people—two enslaved, one indentured—living beside each other, struggling against their circumstances, trying to bend destiny. As the seventeenth century burns to a close in Tidewater, Virginia, America’s character is wrought in the fires of wealth, race, and freedom. Young Bless, the only child left to her enslaved mother, stubbornly crafts the terms of her vital existence. She stands as the lone bulwark between her mother and irreparable despair, her mother’s only possibility of hope, as Bless reshapes the boundaries of love. David is a helping child and a solace to his parents, and he…