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SECTION I

In 1873, Sethe, a former slave, resides with Denver, her reclusive 18-year-old daughter, in a haunted two-story house at 124 Bluestone Road outside of Cincinnati, Ohio. The house once sheltered a close family, including Grandma Baby Suggs; Sethe's two sons, Buglar and Howard; and her infant daughter, Beloved. All are gone now except Sethe and Denver.

Almost nine years after Baby Suggs's death, Sethe and Denver's isolation is ruptured by the unforeseen arrival of Paul D, a survivor of Sweet Home, the Kentucky slave farm where Sethe, her husband Halle, and their children were also enslaved. In conversation, Sethe and Paul D reveal memories of their former lives of subjugation. Owned for years by the benign Garners, a childless couple, the slaves eventually fell under the cruel tyranny of an unnamed schoolteacher, who destroyed the farm's harmony and forced the slaves to desperate measures of rebellion and flight.

Sethe divulges to Paul D the catastrophic events that caused her to run away from Sweet Home. Pregnant with her fourth child and fearing for her family's future under the schoolteacher's reign, Sethe surrendered her sons and daughter to a woman in a wagon, waiting in the corn. Before she could escape herself, however, two white boysÐ'--the schoolteacher's nephewsÐ'--sucked out her breast milk and lashed her with rawhide whips. Although she was in terrible pain from the whipping, Sethe ran away from Sweet Home that night. A white girl found Sethe, tended to her injuries, and helped her give birth to her second daughter.

Sethe reveals that later, her oldest girl died from having her throat cut. Paul D, empathetic because of his own experience with slavery, massages the thick scars on Sethe's back as his other hand strokes her breast. The ghost of Sethe's dead daughter, which haunts her house, reacts angrily to Sethe and Paul D's closeness and causes the whole house to shake. Paul D authoritatively banishes the ghost and takes Sethe to bed. Denver, meanwhile, sits on the porch, missing the ghost's presence and resenting Paul D's intrusion into her and her mother's lives. She miserably appeases her loneliness and apprehension with bread and jelly.

The brief and unsatisfying sexual encounter between Paul D and Sethe reminds them both of slavery. He recalls his slave-brother, Sixo, who walked 34 miles to and from meetings with his lover, Patsy; Sethe recalls kitchen work for Mrs. Garner, who helped her with the tedious chores of bristle-sorting and ink-making. Aged 13 when she arrived at Sweet Home, Sethe took a year to select a husband from among the five male slaves. Halle, the gentlest man, revealed his qualities through devotion to Baby Suggs, his crippled mother, whom he worked to emancipate. Sethe naively requested a marriage service to honor her union with Halle. Mrs. Garner laughed a little at the suggestion of slaves needing the same type of marital conventions as whites. Nonetheless, Sethe, dressed in a make-do wedding frock, enjoyed her brief honeymoon in Mr. Garner's cornfield. The other Sweet Home slaves celebrated Sethe and Halle's honeymoon evening with a feast of new corn.

A solitary child-woman, Denver takes refuge in a circle of boxwood shrubs and inhales the fragrance of cologne. Her memories return to an earlier time when she saw Sethe kneeling in prayer beside a white dress with "its sleeve around her mother's waist." Denver savors the story of her birth and Sethe's dim memories of her own mother, known only as Ma'am. Denver's thoughts blend with Sethe's voice retelling the episode in which Sethe prepared to die but was saved by Amy Denver, a threadbare white servant girl fleeing toward Boston from the cruelties of Mr. Buddy. Amy's plucky encouragement and application of first aid relieved Sethe's swollen feet and helped her crawl to safety, far from schoolteacher's reach.

Chiming in is a third voice, Paul D. Paul D is singing prison songs and thinking over his journey from Sweet Home to Alfred, Georgia and on to Delaware. Hinting that he may settle in Cincinnati, Paul D asks Sethe about job opportunities and questions whether Denver will mind his presence. Sethe, who believes that Denver is a charmed child, begins telling Paul D how schoolteacher tracked her family down in Cincinnati. She indicates that she spent time in jail after schoolteacher's visit and that Denver remained safely with her when she was imprisoned.

After three days, Denver demands to know whether Paul D intends to stay. Sethe insists that Paul D remain and scolds Denver for discourtesy, even though the girl is old enough to be considered an adult. To ease the tension, Paul D invites Sethe and Denver to go to a carnival, saying "Thursday, tomorrow, is for coloreds . . . ." The next morning, the threesome, among Cincinnati's 400 blacks, walk toward the lumberyard and take in the sights, including clowns and freaks.

Section II

As Paul D, Sethe, and Denver return from the carnival late Thursday afternoon, they encounter a lone young woman, wet and wheezing, who has walked up from the stream and is napping on the stump outside the house. To Paul's questions, the girl gives hazy responses, introducing herself as Beloved and denying that she has a last name. Concerned for her tenuous state of health, Sethe and Paul D take her in; Denver quivers with anticipation. The girl sleeps for four days in Baby Suggs's former room. Paul D fears that Beloved may suffer from cholera. Denver takes care of her, hiding Beloved's urine-soaked sheets and lying about the fact that Beloved appears weak on her feet even though she is able to lift a rocking chair with one hand.

In the fourth week of her residency at 124 Bluestone Road, Beloved clings to Sethe, following her about the kitchen and awaiting her return from work at the restaurant. Like a hungry child, Beloved clamors for Sethe's stories, questioning her about her "diamonds," the crystal earrings that Mrs. Garner gave Sethe as a wedding gift to mark the union that had no proper ceremony or celebration. Sethe describes how she pilfered fabrics to fashion a wedding dress, which she topped off with a wool shawl that "kept [her] from looking like a haint peddling." Following the Saturday honeymoon in the cornfield, Mrs. Garner gave Sethe the earrings and wished the couple happiness.

More questions about Sethe's mother elicit meager factsÐ'--that she worked in indigo fields from dawn to nightfall and then slept through Sundays. The demands of her toil gave her only a few weeks in which to bond with her infant daughter, who was then passed on to a wet-nurse