Right, he thought, looking at a sky vulgar with stars. Clear and right. The silver that glittered there was not at all unreachable. And that wide swath of cream pouring through the stars was his for the tasting.

Jacob soon dies of smallpox, leaving his wife, Rebekka, to cope with the servants: the half-crazed Sorrow; Florens, an orphan; and Lina, a Native American girl. The women become friends in adversity, amidst continual threats of violence, madness, and, of course, ultimately, murder.

Morrison writes passages of undeniable beauty. Of Rebekka and the death of her children: ‘A kind of invisible ash had settled over her which vigils at the small graves in the meadow did nothing to wipe away.’ But what is most impressive and prescient about the writing is that Morrison portrays an America seething with religious divisions in its very origins, immersed in and inured to everyday inhumanity. Of a slave owner, a character remarks,

Turning profit into useless baubles, unembarrassed by sumptuary ... wasting candles at midday, he would always be unable to ride out any setback, whether it be lost ship or ruined crop.

Economic collapse was always on the horizon.

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