Another book that has been on my to-be-read pile for years, Beloved is perhaps Toni Morrison’s best known work, in which the author re-imagines the life of Margaret Garner, a real-life runaway enslaved mother who killed one of her children and tried to kill the others in an effort to prevent them being recaptured and re-enslaved. The real-life Margaret Garner was arrested and imprisoned, and ultimately released after becoming a rallying point for abolitionists who pointed to her as an example of the horrific consequences of slavery.

Spoilers ahead!

In Beloved, Margaret Garner becomes Sethe Suggs. Sethe came to the Sweet Home plantation as a young girl and yearned for freedom. For the enslaved persons who worked there, Sweet Home was neither sweet nor a home, but it was at least livable – if barely – under the Garners. Sethe was a trusted companion to the owner’s wife, and the five enslaved men who lived on the plantation were allowed to carry guns and learn to read (if they wanted to – which they didn’t), and Sethe was allowed to marry one of the enslaved men. But when the owner died, and his wife brought her brother-in-law (“schoolteacher”) to help with the plantation, life at Sweet Home became intolerable. When a plan to run away goes awry, Sethe finds herself on the run by herself – having sent her three children ahead of her to her mother-in-law in Ohio – heavily pregnant and pursued. After a horrifying attack by schoolteacher’s nephews followed by a lonely and harrowing journey, Sethe arrives in Cincinnati with newborn daughter Denver to join her mother-in-law, Baby Suggs, and her three older children (sons Howard and Buglar, and an unnamed older baby girl). But schoolteacher catches up with Sethe – and she makes the heart-wrenching decision to kill her children and herself rather than see them all taken back to Sweet Home. She only manages to kill one of her four children – the unnamed older baby girl – and is sent to prison after schoolteacher deems her not fit to return to the plantation.

The story opens eighteen years after this tragic history. Baby Suggs has died, the boys have left, and Sethe lives alone with Denver and the ghost of the unnamed baby girl. After her release from prison, Sethe had the baby buried under a tombstone bearing the one word she could afford – “Beloved.” Now the baby ghost is Denver’s only company – until Paul D, one of the Sweet Home men (not Sethe’s husband Halle, who never made it to Ohio) moves into the house and expels the ghost. Shortly thereafter, a young woman calling herself Beloved appears out of nowhere. Sethe and Denver take her in, over Paul D’s misgivings.

Denver quickly becomes attached to Beloved, but Beloved has eyes only for Sethe. But something is off about Beloved – she came from nowhere and can explain nothing about her origins; her feet are so soft she doesn’t seem to have walked a day in her life. Eventually, Denver puts two and two together and concludes that Beloved is her dead sister, returned in the flesh – but to what end? Denver believes – hopes – it’s to provide company and relieve her loneliness.

Denver neither believed nor commented on Sethe’s speculations, and she lowered her eyes and never said a word about the cold house. She was certain that Beloved was that white dress that had knelt with her mother in the keeping room, the true-to-life presence of the baby that had kept her company most of her life. And to be looked at by her, however briefly, kept her grateful for the rest of the time when she was merely the looker.

Paul D is less accepting of Beloved. He doesn’t like her sudden appearance or her immediate adoption into the household – but it’s Sethe’s house, not his, and he has no say. Soon he finds himself involuntarily driven from the house (which he suspects has something to do with Beloved), and when a neighbor tells him what Sethe was imprisoned for eighteen years before, he leaves altogether. At first, the three women – left to their own devices – give themselves up to the enjoyment of each other. One day, Sethe finds a pair-and-a-half of ice skates, and she and her two daughters (because Sethe too has concluded that Beloved his her dead daughter come back to her) spend a sparkling day on a frozen pond.

Nobody saw them falling.

Holding hands, bracing each other, they swirled over the ice. Beloved wore the pair; Denver wore one, step-gliding over the treacherous ice. Sethe thought her two shoes would hold and anchor her. She was wrong. Two paces onto the creek, she lost her balance and landed on her behind. The girls, screaming with laughter, joined her on the ice. Sethe struggled to stand and discovered not only that she could do a split, but that it hurt. Her bones surfaced in unexpected places and so did laughter. Making a circle or a line, the three of them could not stay upright for one whole minute, but nobody saw them falling.

Each seemed to be helping the other two stay upright, yet every tumble doubled their delight. The live oak and soughing pine on the banks enclosed them and absorbed their laughter while they fought gravity for each other’s hands. Their skirts flew like wings and their skin turned pewter in the cold and dying light.

Nobody saw them falling.

The ice skating day was the end of Sethe’s brief happiness with Denver and Beloved. Soon the balance of the household is upset – Beloved is consolidated her power, growing literally larger as Sethe shrinks. Finally Denver – who has never strayed far from the house since returning from prison with her mother as an infant, who was the first to recognize and believe Beloved to be her sister, who welcomed Beloved as much-needed companionship, who always feared her mother might kill again – decides it’s up to her to save their family.

There is so much in Beloved – an unsparing look at the horrors of slavery, paired with musings on family, desperation, malicious envy, motherhood, community, redemption… In trying to think of what I would write about this book, I was overwhelmed just by the number and complexity of the themes and the richness of the text. I’m not even sure what to say – and look, I’ve written paragraphs and paragraphs just summarizing the plot. Rather than skim the surface and fail to do justice to this slim but rich narrative, I’ll just encourage you to read it right away if you haven’t already. I wish it hadn’t taken me so long to get to Beloved, with its evocative writing and heart-wrenching, unsparing story.

Have you read any Toni Morrison?