K.S.
I was impressed by the originality, wit, and emotional complexity woven throughout The Black Jellybeans EPISODE ONE.
Your portrayal of 1906 Baltimore creates a vivid, compelling backdrop for a narrative that explores identity, class, race, and personal reinvention with humor and emotional depth. Jim Eberton’s unraveling world particularly struck me as he confronts long-buried truths about his heritage while navigating financial collapse and social expectation. The interplay between chaotic comedy, family secrets, and the harsh realities of a racially divided society gives the novel a distinctive energy and layered emotional resonance. Nelly’s storyline, alongside the evolving dynamics between the characters, further enriches the narrative with vulnerability, tension, and heart. Your ability to balance historical atmosphere with sharp character-driven storytelling makes the work both engaging and memorable.
From Booksie:
Miriam Smith– Thu, April 23rd, 2026
Hi! I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed your story. Your writing style is truly engaging and unique. It kept me hooked from start to finish. I’d love to know what inspired you to start writing stories.
Miriam, thank you for the lovely, encouraging words. I was inspired to start writing after reading newspaper stories about people and events from the past. You can’t make stuff like this up. Or, maybe yes, I can. I thought to myself, Plus, even as a boy, I enjoyed exploring known and forgotten places imbued with history around me. Yours truly, Jackson Tel.
****
A beguiling Feat of Historical Imagination:
Episode One of The Black Jellybeans is a beguiling feat of historical imagination: a richly textured chamber of voices, scenes, and sly comic choreography that left me eager for the next installment. From the luminous Prelude Tel stitches Baltimore of 1894-1906 into a novel of manners, mischief, and aching identity. The prose constantly surprises—at once wry and capacious—whether rendering Prudence T. Eberton’s iron rule, Ida’s moral clarity, or the incandescent, survivalist humor of Nelly Jones. Jim Eberton emerges as an affecting, interior hero: a young man split between inheritance and selfhood, his obsession with the mysterious death of his mother, Letitia. The recurring motif of the black jellybeans provides quiet, thematic symbolism.
Tel’s originality lives in the book’s structure as much as its content. The “rabbit holes” (notably “Grey Man” and “One Half of a Second”) and digressions—Evie & L’Jay skits, telegraph-room capers, Captain Pennycook’s menace —feel like deliberate, deliberate detours that deepen rather than distract.
The dialogue crackles with period details like the bicycle craze of the late 1800s, early college football, and the Gayety Theatre in Baltimore, which are rendered with affectionate specificity. Plus, the author, Jackson Tel, balances comedy and darker social tensions—race, coercion, social control—without melodrama.
If there is a quibble, it is mild: Episode One luxuriates in character and atmosphere, so much so that readers hungry for rapid plot progression may find its pleasures too drawn out.
That aside, Tel’s craftsmanship and empathy make this a resonant opening to the Black Jellybeans series.
I enthusiastically recommend The Black Jellybeans to readers who savor inventive historical fiction and unforgettable characters.
****