Toni Morrison · 1987 · exile

Toni Morrison's 1987 novel. Sethe escapes the Sweet Home plantation in Kentucky while pregnant, crossing the Ohio River to freedom in Cincinnati - where, rather than see her children taken back into slavery, she makes a terrible choice. Years later a young woman calling herself Beloved appears at the house on Bluestone Road, and the past Sethe fled comes back to claim her.

1. 1
   Sweet Home

   The Kentucky plantation - its name a bitter irony - from which the pregnant Sethe flees north, sending her children ahead and following through the woods alone.

2. 2
   Ohio River

   The river crossing into free territory, where a white girl named Amy helps Sethe give birth to Denver on the banks before she is ferried across to the northern shore.

3. 3
   Cincinnati

   The house at 124 Bluestone Road, home of Baby Suggs, where Sethe's brief freedom ends in tragedy and, years later, the ghost of the past returns in the flesh as Beloved.