Sethe, an escaped slave living outside Cincinnati in post-Civil War Ohio, is at the center of the story. Having been the slave of a somewhat more benevolent pair of owners, the Garners, she has actually been allowed to "marry" her partner, Halle, and keep her children with her on the farm--unusual in slave holding country where women were often "bred" to produce new slaves for sale. When Mr. Garner dies, Mrs. Garner brings her brother-in-law, Schoolteacher, to run the farm, Sweet Home, and life takes a decidedly downhill turn with his much more cruel and all too common practices for slave management. As a result, the slaves at Sweet Home for the first time begin to plan for escape. Sethe ends up sending her 3 oldest children, 2 boys and an infant girl, on ahead with plans to run with husband Halle a day later. But before that can happen, 6-months-pregnant Sethe is raped and beaten senseless by Schoolteacher's "pupils" while he "records" the events on paper, and Halle, who is trapped in an observer's position in the barn's loft, loses his mind. Sethe does not know what has become of Sethe until years later.
Sethe escapes to Cincinnati and finds Halle's mother, who the Garners allowed to go free after Halle worked to "buy" her from them. Sethe has delivered her newborn with the help of fugitive white girl named Denver while on the road to Cincinnati and so names the baby after her. Sethe is re-united with her children and beginning her physical recovery when Schoolteacher shows up with the sheriff to take her and her children back to Sweet Home. In desperation, she grabs her children, runs to the tool shed and tries to kill them--to "keep them safe." She only succeeds with the older baby girl and is then taken to jail as Schoolteacher now realizes she is broken beyond repair or utility.
When Sethe gets out of jail, she buys a headstone, through bartering sex, for her murdered daughter, but can only "afford" to have the word "Beloved" chiseled into it. The house now becomes haunted with a spiteful ghost that everyone believes to belong to the murdered girl. Mother-in-law, Baby Suggs, who had achieved fame in the local community for her lay preaching, takes to her bed and dies. The community shuns Sethe, and Denver has become so fearful that she never leaves the house. The ghost drives the two sons to run away when they are only 13 and they are never heard from again. Sethe gets work as a cook at a local restaurant to support herself and Denver.
Enter Paul D., apparently the only other slave to survive and escape Sweet Home. He has always loved Sethe and seems to banish the ghost from the house with his arrival. But within a short time, a young black woman appears on their doorstep and is taken in. She says her name is Beloved. Denver is the first to recognize her sister and Paul D. begins to have suspicions, but is eventually driven from the house, both by the supernatural manipulations of Beloved, and by finding out from someone about Sethe's murder of her daughter.
Life at this point spins out of control with Beloved and Sethe in a guilt-induced cycle of decline--Sethe fading away physically and psychologically, while Beloved grows ever larger and more demanding and unpredictable. Denver now fears Beloved's murderous intentions more than her mother's and goes out into the community to seek help. The women in town come to exorcise the haunting presence, Sethe is stopped from a disastrous murder of her white benefactor, and Paul D. re-enters the picture to care for Sethe.
I do not usually write such detailed story lines and not sure why I did here, except in an attempt to understand better what this book was about. The immediate impact is a renewed and expanded understanding of the destruction--short- and long-term--wrought by the institution of slavery. The former slaves in this book have lost their sense of self-identity, a loss even greater than losing family members or never being allowed to have a family. Escaping to freedom is only the initial step on a long road to recovery. I did totally understand the horror and despair that drove Sethe to murder and attempted murder. Having been allowed to be a mother, unlike many slave women, Sethe was driven to protect her children from the evil perpetrated on black slaves by many white owners (mostly men presumably). What I don't understand is the unforgiving and annihilating character of Beloved.
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