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Through the story of a Korean War veteran and his attempt to reconcile with life, the Nobel Prize in Literature winner reflects on the deepest America.

The body of a friend shattered by shrapnel, the voice of a man begging for mercy, the hand of a little girl digging through garbage to find something to eat...These are images that return again and again to the mind of Frank Money, a Korean War veteran who now returns to the United States in search of oblivion and affection.

It is the 1950s and Frank's wounds are not only physical: his homeland is racist, his family has accumulated much hatred, and his return seems more a path to hell than a homecoming. His destination is Georgia because Frank wants to rescue and bring home his sister Cee, married to a pimp who abandoned her a few days after the wedding, and working in the home of an unscrupulous doctor.

It is the determination to save this fragile woman that will lead Frank to assume his guilt and settle accounts with what was his life. There, in that coming and going of deep emotions, shines the talent of Toni Morrison, a woman who carries pain at her fingertips and governs it with few and good words.

"At eighty-one, I feel attentive, vital, I would say splendid... when I write."
Toni Morrison

Review:
"Morrison has found a pure and direct voice and style... she has revealed the ways in which violence intertwines with passion to redeem a past that returns and hurts."
Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times