Themes include family history, education, and racism, and the prose narrative is interspersed with poetic passages ("love songs") that provide insight into and detail of the protagonist's ancestors, who are people of African, Creek, and Scottish descent.

One of the novel's narrative strands follows her youth and education, and that development is interspersed with her research into her family's history, a story centered in the fictional town of Chicasetta, Georgia, where her family had been enslaved by Samuel Pinchard, a brutal white man who, in the run-up to the American Civil War, also raped the enslaved people.

Throughout the novel, poetic passages ("love songs") chronicle the lives of Ailey's ancestors, who are of African, Creek, and Scottish descent.

There is a connection also with Washington, D.C., where Ailey was born, and where her parents moved after getting married; their love and marriage during the Civil rights movement is another narrative strand.

Also narrated is the story of Ailey's troubled sister, Lydia, whose promise was thwarted by sexual abuse and addiction.

[1] Du Bois's concept of "The Talented Tenth" is reflected in Ailey's family and their potential and achievements, even as their lives are always weighed down and threatened by trauma.

Jeffers, a poet who by 2021 had published a half a dozen collections including the highly praised The Age of Phillis, had written prose before, but was not interested in writing a novel.

Wicks commented: "The shelves of the Western literary canon are filled with so many lengthy epics by men, and I'm excited for Love Songs to hold its own alongside them.

During the 2021 Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture's annual literary festival, on Juneteenth Jeffers was a featured author and read from the novel and from her 2020 poetry collection, The Age of Phillis.

[10] Kirkus Reviews had high praise for the "sprawling, ambitious debut novel": "If this isn't the Great American Novel, it's a mighty attempt at achieving one.