Book

Morrison, Toni, author.

Beloved : a novel / by Toni Morrison ; [with a new foreword by the author].

First Vintage International edition.

New York : Vintage International, [2004]

©2004

xix, 321 pages, 3 unnumbered pages ; 21 cm

Set after the American Civil War (1861-1865), the novel is inspired by the story of an African American slave, Margaret Garner, who escaped slavery in Kentucky late January 1856 by fleeing to Ohio, a free state. In the novel, the protagonist Sethe is also a slave who escapes slavery, running to Cincinnati, Ohio. After twenty-eight days of freedom, a posse arrives to retrieve her and her children under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which gave slave owners the right to pursue slaves across state borders. Sethe kills her two-year-old daughter rather than allow her to be recaptured and taken back to Sweet Home, the Kentucky plantation from which Sethe recently fled. A woman presumed to be her daughter, called Beloved, returns years later to haunt Sethe's home at 124 Bluestone Road, Cincinnati, Ohio.

Portion of statement of responsibility taken from cover.

"Originally published in a slightly different form in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 1987"--Title page verso.

Reading Counts RC High School 8.1 19 Quiz: 01067 Guided reading level: NR.

ESL 112+

Pulitzer Prize for fiction, 1988

American Book Award, 1988

Some Davenport copies shelved in Book Club section.

African American women -- Fiction.

Women slaves -- Fiction.

Infanticide -- Fiction.

Historical fiction.

African American women -- Fiction.

Women slaves -- Fiction.

Infanticide -- Fiction.

Historical fiction.

Ohio -- Fiction.

Ohio.

Historical fiction.

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