"Beloved" by Toni Morrison (1-66 pp)

The whole picture took place in 1873. Sethe, a former slave, with her four children and mother-in-law left Kentucky to live in freedom in Ohio, where everybody avoided them. Only one day Sethe met her old friend Paul D Garner, whom she had got to know in the Sweet Home. She was sold there in her thirteen. The girl had to choose one of five men who were in the Sweet Home, and it was Halle Suggs, who had become her husdand. Halle was different from other men, as he respected Sethe, loved her and treated her not las his property, but as a friend. He gave her five years of marriage and four children, but then died. Only one child now stayed with Sethe, it was Denver (the girl of eighteen), as her first daughter had been murdered, and only one word was on her head stone "Beloved" it was enough. Now her ghost disturbed Sethe and Denver. Because of the baby's ghost two sons had left their mother, as they couldn't bear that any more. Several years later Sethe's mother-in-law died, so they stood alone: the mother and her daughter. But despite of baby's ghost Sethe had no desire to move somewhere else, as all her life she had been running from her troubles. That time her little daughter had been murdered, and that's why the woman didn't want to make the same mistake. Everything was smooth till Paul D's comming. After Denver's brothers had gone and her grandmother had died, and as  her peers avoided her, Paul D had sent away the ghost and taken all Sethe's attention from Denver to him, the girl felt herself lost.