I think I was more excited about the premise, but the execution…something about it didn’t pull me in so I decided to dnf

Let me begin by saying that this is not your average book. You need time to process all that is going on here. The story begins in rural Mississippi (goes to North Carolina and Ghana) and spans across three generations.

What I took away from this book, is that Lottie Rebecca Lee was selected by the ancestors, to tell their story and bring everything to a final rest.

This book was placed in the Historical Fiction genre, but it is so much more than that.

Very interesting book I like how each generation had a problem They had to survive. It was interesting how this woman who's sold to this man named Robert b.. She was only twelve years old because her parents died. The white overseer who was her father. Gave it to Man to be married. They had a lot of problems in this. Her mother was very high, spirited. She had three sons. James decided he was gonna leave and left benjamin and leonard to stay there with the father. The mother started to go off and to the tavern. To have sex with other men to make morning. To have sex with other men to make money. She also disappeared for a while and then came back. Benjamin was very upset with this and he proceeded to kill her This set up a map for a lot of disappointment in life. A lot of bad things happen in this book, but they kept going on and you can see how hard they tried. There was always one thing after another that tried to solve it by going to war that didn't helped. James and Lyn to seem to handle it OK. But benjamin had a lot anger just like his father and I think by losing that farm. They try to find through God in the church and that helps some of them. But a lot of times did not help Benjamin.. You just drifted around and things always seem to get worse for him. He married a woman named Rebecca. And that did not work out very well, but he had a son.. That didn't work out as well. You'll find out how the story ends. It's pretty interesting how generations came about and hell. The greyhound daughter found out why all this was happening and she was pretty interesting, too.

Trinity by Zelda Lockhart may be in my top 10 for this year. This book was amazing. The dog fights was mindblowing. The young boy struggling with becoming a man and still needing his absent mother had me in my feelings: Many African-Americans do nothave access to their family history due to slavery and not being on the census until 1870, but this book is a great representation of a fictional family history novel. I'm an avid genealogist so this book held a special place in my heart. Run, don't walk to get this gem! #Trinity #NetGalley

How can a family heal the hurt that has been plaguing them for three generations?

This is an exquisite and sharply observed family story that hovers over the generations of the Lee family as each generation wants so badly the freedom that the previous generation tries to hold off until the unvarnished realities stifle and suffocate the hopes of a dream deferred.

Lockhart is a deft writer setting each chapter with the spirit voice of the past and the tension of the characters in the present and weaving them in and out one another’s orbits withholding secrets from one another and themselves.

There are punch-in-the-gut revelations, but it is the more subtle observations that will linger in your soul long after you read the last page.

A very necessary tale from slavery to social injustices to knowledge that takes us from Africa to America to Africa and back again to America before the past and present can be healed.

I received a copy of this book from Amistad (via Netgalley) as part of their Juneteenth program and the publication date was July 4th, which is so appropriate for the subject and characters of this amazing book.

I throughly enjoyed this beautifully written book. It does contain scenes that are hard to get through but I did find necessary to tell the story. Trinity captivated me from beginning to end. The narrative between the characters beginning with a young girl “sold” off to a man 50 years her senior and his mistreatment of her and the sons she bore him, are told in a way that Europe’s back to the south of slavery and the after affects of the Civil War. This is a work of fiction but this story rings true to so much of history and southern black life. I hope readers continue to read and circulate this book so that it gets the attention it deserves.

Trinity is a haunting, beautiful, heartbreaking, authentic novel of Black trauma and healing over the span of generations. It follows the Black male heirs of a family and displays the hurt and pain that they are unable to articulate themselves. This was a challenging read, for sure. It's difficult to read about such trauma, especially when it's so raw. But it's beautifully written, and I'm honored to have read it. I'm grateful to Amistad and NetGalley for the ARC.

The read was powerful. It was literally the history of black trauma from slavery to the mother land. It gave insight through the eyes of our young black men sent to fight in wars and coming back broken mentally physically and spiritually. I never truly understood the mental health out black men faced in Vietnam and the world wars until I buried my estranged father a few years ago. Soldiers came and talked at his service and it was the first time we truly understood some of the demons he faced in life. He did 4 tours in Vietnam. This is the story of many of our fathers and grandfathers told through the eyes of women. Their mothers and daughters. It raises the question how to we heal the broken spirits of our black men. A broken boy stays broken even when he becomes of age and the world sees him as a man. This book hits your heart right where it hurts. Trigger warnings are domestic abuse, murder, rape, slavery and so on. Read this story!

Thank you to Net Galley for providing an early copy of Trinity

Trinity by Zelda Lockhart is a difficult but ultimately important examination of self, family influence and the power of the past in determining the kind of life one chooses to live. At times brutal, at times gently coaxing, Lockhart never lets up on the characters or the reader as life's realities mixed with the spiritual tell a story of generations of the Lee family from their roots in the Congo to life in Mississippi and North Carolina .and a return to Ghana.
The spiritual influence of the long-ago female ancestor brought unwillingly to slavery in the United States has a profound effect on generations to come. Families struggle with poverty, drugs, murder and suicide. Great-great-granddaughter Lottie Rebecca will come to terms with the phenomenon of her ancestor's influence and invite her to continue to intercede.
"I choose you. I see you. You are of me, and I will be here even when and after the rest of the stories come, even the hard ones."

God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are commonly referred to as the The Holy Trinity in Christianity and Zelda Lockhart explores this concept of transcendent interconnectedness in her latest novel – only here, the “holy” can be dropped and the Spirit manifests as a spunky representation of a diligent mother determined to guide her wayward earth-bound children to healing and redemption.

The opening passages of the novel harken to three major remembrances of past sins and memories of betrayal – (1) by Ghanian male ancestors who willfully forfeit the protection, provision, and nurturing of their womenfolk to reap the riches of selling their own for material gain and profit in the slave trade; (2) a disapproving stance on their compromise to fight white men’s enemies to retore their honor; and (3) their indefensible abandonment of the black family. Fast forward to 1939, Sampson, MS, where generations of forced servitude and brutality have hardened a mean, bitter Leander Lee to the point that his drunkenness and heavy-handedness causes his child-wife (Lottie, fifty years his junior) and two sons (James and Benjamin/Bennie) to abandon him along with his youngest son to their lonesome on a sharecropper’s farm. Lottie’s sudden and mysterious disappearance and Bennie’s rash Army enlistment and service in the Korean War set in motion a series of events that truly yield lifelong torment and hauntings for both Bennie ( the father) and Bennie Jr (the son) who battles a different type of trauma post the Vietnam War.

The not-so-patriotic bits of American history are weaved into this fictional tale as each man grapples with Jim Crow laws that carry racially discriminating loopholes leading to severe disenfranchisement, loss of livelihood, homelessness and the overall broken promises of the American Dream. We also witness the women who love them consumed as collateral damage until otherworldly forces intervene. This book is packed with so many relevant themes that will spawn deep discussions among book clubs.

I loved the story and recommend it for those who don’t mind some dark, violent moments and a touch of speculative fiction/magical realism in their Southern tales that explore the stories of the African Diaspora and the call from the Motherland for closure.

Thanks to Amistad and NetGalley for the opportunity to read in advance for an honest review.