24 Book Club Discussion Questions for Zeal by Morgan Jerkins
By Bookum Team, Oct 8, 2025
At Bookum, we love creating conversations around stories that span generations, history, and human emotion. This phenomenal book Zeal by Morgan Jerkins (who recently joined us for a conversation. You can listen in the Bookum Club cubby the app) is a sweeping multigenerational novel that moves from post-Civil War Mississippi to contemporary Harlem, exploring love, loss, family legacies, and the long shadows of history.
These discussion questions are designed to help your Book club unpack the layered characters, complex timelines, and powerful emotional arcs in the book.
Discussion Questions
Themes and Motifs
1 - The title Zeal reflects a sense of passion, devotion, and intensity. How did you see this theme play out in the lives of Harrison, Tirzah, Ardelia, and Oliver?
2 - How does the book explore the tension between love and trauma across generations?
3 - How does the story portray the concept of legacy in family and personal choices?
4 - Jerkins frequently shows characters having to reshape themselves or reinvent who they are. How did this theme resonate with you in the historical and modern timelines?
5 - How does the book depict unrequited love and how do the characters respond to it?
6 - Freedom and safety are recurring themes for Tirzah and Harrison. How do the characters balance risk and security in their pursuit of love and independence?
Characters and Relationships
7 - Ardelia and Oliver’s relationship is complicated by history and family legacies. How did you feel about their dynamic?
8 - Harrison and Tirzah’s love story is tragic and complicated by historical constraints. Who did you root for and why? or how would have you navigated the obstacle they faced?
9 - How did Tabitha and Harrison’s relationship contrast with Tirzah and Harrison’s? Does the book suggest a true love or are there multiple valid forms of devotion?
10 - Tirzah, Isaac, and Spencer are involved in moments of violence, power, and survival. How did these interactions shape your perception of their characters?
11 - How do secondary characters, like Novella and Free, influence the main storylines and add depth to the generational narrative?
12 - How do the children in the story, including Free and Miriam, symbolize distance, understanding, or generational memory within families?
Historical and Cultural Context
13 - How does Jerkins use historical settings such as the Freedmen’s Bureau, post-Civil War Mississippi, and the Great Migration to shape her characters’ choices and struggles?
14 - What role does education play in Tirzah’s life and freedom? How does literacy and knowledge affect her agency?
15 - How did reading the book affect your understanding of the impact of slavery, segregation, and systemic oppression across generations?
16 - Music, particularly blues, appears as a cultural and emotional thread in the story. How does it connect characters across time and place?
Plot and Pacing
17 - The book alternates timelines between the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. Did you find this structure effective? Were there moments you wished for more or less focus on certain timelines?
18 - How did the pacing of love stories, tragedies, and family conflicts affect your reading experience?
19 - Which moments or plot twists surprised you the most and why?
20 - How did you feel about moments of revenge, violence, or moral reckoning, such as Tirzah’s actions against Spencer?
Reflection and Personal Connection
21 - How does Zeal challenge your thinking about family stories, inherited trauma, or the ways we build love systems based on past generations?
22 - Did you see parallels between Ardelia and Oliver’s modern relationship and the historical relationships of Harrison, Tirzah, Free, Miriam, Novella and Isaac?
23 - How does the concept of zeal connect to your own experiences of love, loyalty, or ambition?
24 - After finishing the book, what moment, character, or theme stayed with you the most and why?
These questions are created for Book club hosts to reflection, debate, and create personal connections among readers. They examine history, family dynamics, romance, and moral complexity while keeping discussion accessible to all members.