Beloved

Beloved by Toni Morrison, 324 pages.
Morrison's 1987 classic won the Pulitzer Prize, and while Morrison didn't win the Nobel prize until 1993, you know that this was the books that closed the deal for her.
The book begins in 1873 in the house outside Cincinnati where Sethe and her daughter Denver live.. The book then travels back to the time that Sethe, Baby Suggs and Paul D were all still enslaved on a plantation called Sweet Home, and then forward again to recount what happened to Sethe and her children in the time since she ran from Sweet Home. The house at 124 Bluestone Road is haunted by the ghost of Sethe's two-year old, the one who did not survive the escape from slavery. Sethe slowly tells the story of her tragic fate. Truly a classic and one worth rereading regularly. I was surprised to see that this was a National Book award finalist, but didnt win the award. So now I'm looking forward to reading Paco's Story by Larry Heinemann (and after that The Hair of Harold Roux, the book that beat out Sula for the National Book Award in 1975).