Beloved

To write this magnificent Pulitzer Prize-winning story, Toni Morrison drew inspiration from the real life of an African-American slave girl, Margaret Garner, who in 1856 escaped from a Kentucky plantation and made it to the free state of Ohio. On the verge of being recaptured, Margaret made the tragic decision to sacrifice her daughter to save her from a life in captivity. In this novel, Sethe is the escaped slave who sold her body to engrave the name of her dead daughter on the tombstone: ten minutes for "Beloved", twenty minutes for "Dear Beloved." Many years later, Sethe lives in Ohio with Denver, her teenage daughter, and Paul D., an old friend who was also a slave. Everyone tries to prosper and forget the past, until one day a young woman appears who says her name is Beloved. She is the age that her daughter would be if she lived and she knows certain things that suggest she could be.