This here is love A novel

Perry's epic debut novel is set during the closing years of the seventeenth century and the dawn of the eighteenth, when the New World was still "new." Perry draws a blistering portrait of slavery through the perspective of young humans ensnared in an inhuman institution. Bless, the daughter of an enslaved woman, is ripped from her mother's care and must navigate life as an enslaved girl. Jack is a Scots Irish indentured servant who views slavery from a vastly different vantage point. And proud David, having been instilled by his father to "belong to no one," heroically fights against the system. They all mature inside this environment deeply enmeshed in brutality. With beautifully well developed characters, Perry deftly weaves their lives together into a heart wrenching narrative. Meticulous research into the time period down to the clothing, the food, the landscape, and the lifestyle create a believably vivid setting. Perry is quick to show how the institution of slavery hurts everyone it touches, and that we are sustained through strife by freedom, family, and love.

Perry debuts with a remarkable narrative of slavery, indentured servitude, and a Black landowner in colonial Virginia. Freeman Andrew Cabarrus has struggled against all odds to obtain farmland and build a home for his enslaved wife, Phoebe, and their five children. He has the money to free them from bondage, but plantation owner Othman Scarborough refuses unless Andrew sells him a prime piece of his property, a concession he's unwilling to make. At another plantation, an enslaved woman named Cassie continues toiling in the tobacco fields after her young daughter Bless is forcibly removed from her care to live in the main house. As Bless comes of age, she grows increasingly defiant. Another plotline follows Rowan Dane, who made the difficult decision to lift his family out of poverty in Ireland by selling himself, his wife, and their young son, Jack, into indentured servitude. Jack grows up in Virginia resenting his father's choices, and when a plantation owner and slaver takes him under his wing as a protégé, Jack is torn between the immorality of enslavement and his desire to do whatever is necessary to never be poor again. The principal characters are singular and unforgettable, and their responses to injustice lead to outcomes that are by turns heartbreaking and uplifting. It's a marvelous tale about the limits of freedom. (Aug.)

DEBUT It's hard to believe that this is Perry's first novel, so effectively does it pull readers deep into the lives of its evolving, powerful, multifaceted characters. Set in the United States and England during 1690s, the book introduces its three main characters as children. There's Bless, born into enslavement in the Colony of Virginia, to a mother who was born free in West Africa; David, who has been ripped away from his parents--a mother who is enslaved and a father who purchased his own freedom; and Jack, from a Scots-Irish family who agreed to become indentured servants to escape poverty and ethnic conflicts in England. Through their stories, Perry authentically and transparently conveys the hardships and injustices visited upon enslaved and indentured people, never shying away from the pervasive racism and classism that the characters face. VERDICT The writing style of award-winning Perry recalls that of Zora Neale Hurston, conveying the richness of intimate personal relationships under a hostile and brutal society, and her storytelling showcases injustice in the manner of Richard Wright. Readers who enjoy the work of either Hurston or Wright will love this novel.--Laura Ellis