A luscious storyteller, Perry brings to light the profound moral and emotional dilemmas her characters face, making the reader feel the weight of their impossible choices and everyday courage. A fierce and luminous debut.--Sheri Reynolds, author of The Rapture of Canaan and The Tender Grave

In the tenderest of prose and the most compelling of storytelling, Princess Joy L. Perry has reached back centuries to our earliest national moments, writing of the confusion that occurs when power crosses love--but oh, how that love can survive! A love at the beginning and at the end. A love which is the sweetest human wisdom, the most merciful of legacies.--Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, author of The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois

In This Here Is Love, Princess Joy L. Perry refuses to shy away from the cruelties of surviving the realities of seventeenth-century America and has charted the terrible truths of her characters' impossible choices--even as they map a journey toward their own freedom, their futures, their shared humanity. In these pages, we have love rooted and rebuilt in the land that stripped these compelling characters of almost all they have, and a blueprint for how hope may still move us forward.--DéLana R. A. Dameron, author of Redwood Court, a Reese's Book Club Selection

This Here is Love is an utterly riveting intergenerational saga of love, betrayal, theft, and resilience. Princess Joy L. Perry laces every chapter with fireworks and unforgettable characters--all off-kilter, wounded, and searching for solace in this epic tale of slavery and freedom.--Lawrence Hill, author of Someone Knows My Name, winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize

In the manner of Edward P. Jones's The Known World, this sweeping and greathearted novel presents a cast of unforgettable characters driven by their hopes and yearnings, men and women who in the face of the suffering and loss and violence of bondage manage to go about the 'brave business of love.' This is a beautiful book.--Janet Peery, National Book Award finalist for The River Beyond the World

Remarkable... A marvelous tale about the limits of freedom.--Publishers Weekly, starred review

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... Readers who enjoy the work of either [Zora Neale] Hurston or [Richard] Wright will love this novel.--Laura Ellis, Library Journal, starred review

Epic... Meticulous research into the time period down to the clothing, the food, the landscape, and the lifestyle create a believably vivid setting.--Lillian Dabney "Booklist"

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Pub date: 2025-08-05

Length: 384 pages