Love Songs is an utterly astounding study of the impact of colorism on the foundation of the United States, followed by an excruciating examination of the legacy of generational sexual abuse.

Jeffers opens in the 1700s with the native Creek people (Muscogee) in the place in the middle of the tall trees (Georgia) and their first interaction with the descendant of an African woman who was brought here enslaved. These are the Songs.

"If a child cannot remember his mother's face, does he still taste her milk? Does he remember the waters inside her?"

Fast forward to Georgia in the 1980s. Little Ailey Pearl Garfield gets into a fight at school, forcing her into private school to ensure opportunity in her future.

Weaving back and forth between the two time periods, this is very much two novels in one. Given Jeffers's heavy use of narrative exposition in relaying the historical saga, the present-day anchor of a badass heroine, and her many potential links to the past, was an enthralling way to tell the completeness of this multigenerational story.

But the Songs consumed me. Once I finished the book I started it over, reading only the Songs in consecutive order. Again, in literature I have found the history my educational curriculum refused to teach.

Jeffers makes it clear in the author's note this is a work of historical fiction. But does it have to be? In one Song it is plausibly constructed that an escaped slave, one of Ailey's ancestors, could have gone on to live a Frederick Douglass-type existence. Who's to say it didn't happen? So many people have had their histories stolen by the conquerors of this usurped land. Love Songs has filled in a narrative gap that deserves it's own place in the cannon of American history.