Beloved

Beloved (1987) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Toni Morrison. Morrison was inspired to write the story after finding a newspaper article about the legal case of Margaret Garner. Garner escaped slavery in Kentucky to the free State of Ohio when U.S. Marshals captured her. To spare her children from being returned to slavery, she killed her two-year-old daughter and attempted to kill her other children. 

Morrison's novel is set after the Civil War in Cincinnati, Ohio. Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but even after the Civil War, she cannot wrest herself from the terrible legacy of slavery. Living with her 18-year-old daughter Denver, she believes the ghost of her eldest daughter haunts her house. When Paul D, a visitor from Sethe's past life on the plantation, comes to visit, he forces the spirit out of the house and gets Sethe and her daughter Denver to go to a carnival. Upon returning, a strange young woman, who calls herself Beloved, is sitting on the house's stoop. Sethe believes that the woman is the daughter she killed to prevent her from being raised in slavery, and Sethe becomes lost in her fantasy of family and caring for the girl. Beloved illustrates the deeply personal and psychological trauma imposed by society's legal brutalities. 

Beloved is the fourth novel published by Toni Morrison, and many consider it her finest. It was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1988 and was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1987. In 1998 a movie starring Oprah Winfrey and Danny Glover was released.