Publishers Weekly
05/22/2023
Lockhart (Fifth Born) chronicles a family’s generational trauma and a spiritual intervention in her intense latest. Benjamin and Lenard Lee are raised in 1940s Mississippi, where they work as field hands for their abusive father, Old Deddy. Their mother, Lottie, tells Benjamin when he’s 13 of her plans to leave and earn enough money to rescue the brothers from their father. Angry and distraught, Benjamin shoots and kills her. The boys’ paths diverge from there: Lenard eventually follows their half brother James to Missouri and becomes a teacher, while Benjamin, now a Korean War veteran, repeats Old Deddy’s abuse on his wife and their son, B.J. Later, B.J. leaves to fight in Vietnam, a war he survives but which wreaks havoc on his psyche and his ability to connect with his wife, Sheila. The Lees’ pain is witnessed by a generations-old spirit, which has also seen their ancestors’ enslavement. When B.J. and Sheila have a daughter, Lottie Rebecca, the spirit is born with her. Lottie Rebecca’s precocious wisdom makes it difficult for her to bond with others until a cathartic trip to her great-grandparents’ Mississippi home, which reveals to her the best way to begin healing the family’s wounds. Lockhart skillfully untangles the long-term effects of violence, trauma, and the history of enslavement on the family. This is not to be missed. (July)
From the Publisher
If we are ancestrally haunted, we may also be ancestrally healed. This is the lesson of Zelda Lockhart’s Trinity, an epic, vivid and heart-wrenching novel. Reminiscent of the work of Gayl Jones and Alice Walker, Lockhart breathes life into the landscape and gives us Black history through characters you will never forget. Beautiful.”
— Imani Perry, author of the New York Times bestseller South to America
"The ancients who said there was something about the number three were right. Trinity rises up alongside The Third Life of Grange Copeland and teaches us about redemption, interconnection, and dignity. May we all have descendants as bold as Zelda Lockhart and the characters she creates to heal what we could not heal. May we all BE legacy bearers as willing as Zelda so that we may honor those who left us everything."
— Alexis Pauline Gumbs, PhD, author of Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals
"Trinity pulses with the very best in Southern spirit-writing. The characters have this way of floating beneath the plot, right above the dirt in a place that is equally rich as it is terrifying. I am forever changed by what Zelda Lockhart has made."
— Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy: An American Memoir
author of Heavy Kiese Laymon
Trinity pulses with the very best in spirit writing.”
SEPTEMBER 2023 -- AudioFile
Lynnette R. Freeman offers a driven narration of Lockhart's latest, the story of Lottie Rebecca Lee, a Black daughter-spirit born to heal her family's generational trauma. Lottie's story grows out of the violence that haunted her ancestors--from her enslaved great-great-great- grandmother to her viciously abusive great-grandfather and her grandfather. In an expressive sorrowful voice, Freeman communicates the fear of living in precarious environments, coupled with the weight of not seeing a path forward. Her depiction of Lottie Rebecca, a girl who embodies her ancestors' rage, hope, and sorrow, is layered, making room for a confused, querulous girl alongside her weary but determined older self. Though not for the faint of heart, this unrelenting story of trauma and redemption will resonate with listeners. S.A.H. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2023-05-09
From the time she's 6 years old, Lottie Rebecca Lee, the namesake of both her grandmother and great-grandmother, is haunted by the spirits of seven generations of ancestors as she struggles to make sense of her family’s intergenerational trauma.
From a young age, Lottie Rebecca says, she knew that what she “was experiencing about living and what other people were experiencing were different dimensions of remembering.” Lottie Rebecca’s visions begin with her great-great-great grandmother’s capture by slave traders in the Congo and move on to the hot Mississippi tobacco fields where her grandfather Bennie grew up under the violent hand of his father, “Old Deddy,” and his desperate mother, Lottie, who danced at Mr. Genorette’s tavern as she tried to save enough money to escape their plight. Lottie Rebecca also observes the experiences of Bennie and his son, B.J., her father, during the Korean and Vietnam wars and the hidden battles with PTSD, violence, and addiction that follow them home. Tracing the family's trauma through the decades and the path to healing through storytelling, the novel recalls Octavia Butler’s Kindred in its innovative approach to time and its rendering of history in ways that are immediate to the modern reader and Toni Morrison’s Beloved in its exploration of haunting, trauma, and family identity. The novel seems to embody the past more fully than it does the present, though, and as a result loses some of its narrative power as it arrives at its hopeful yet somewhat attenuated conclusion. While the novel does remain cohesive, more of the urgency that characterized its beginning would have propelled it from being very good to great.
A challenging yet inspiring portrait of the resilience of Black families.
