Milkman Dead was born shortly after a neighborhood eccentric hurled himself off a rooftop in a vain attempt at flight. For the rest of his life he, too, will be trying to fly. With this brilliantly imagined novel, Toni Morrison transfigures the coming-of-age story as audaciously as Saul Bellow or Gabriel García Márquez. As she follows Milkman from his rustbelt city to the place of his family's origins, Morrison introduces an entire cast of...

Raised by her aunt until she is six, Betty, who will later marry Malcolm X, joins her mother and stepfamily in 1940s Detroit, where she learns about the civil rights movement.

During a family vacation at Lake Michigan, nine-year-old cousins Willow and Delia, desperate to avoid being flower girls in their aunt's wedding, try to demonstrate that they would do better as chefs for the reception.

Minnesota, 1911. Nilda Carlson is torn between life in the city of Blackduck and spending time with her family back home on the farm. Her employer, Mrs. Schoenleber, gives her more and more responsibility and experience. Still new to America herself, Nilda focuses on the area's immigrant community, but she'll have to fight to get her ideas accepted by the locals and donors alike. One of her greatest joys is her weekly piano lesson with Fritz Larsson....

Twelve-year-old Suzy Bowles dreams of life outside the small town of Burr Oak, Michigan, but when she stumbles on the opportunity to learn ostrich-riding with the infamous Madame Marantette, her obligations to her family on the farm threaten to derail her dreams of a bigger life. Includes photographs and information on Madame Marantette.

"River Bend, Michigan, is the kind of small town most can't imagine leaving, but three women couldn't wait to escape. When each must return--Linda Williams, never sure what she wants; her mother, Paula, always too sure; and Beth DeWitt, one of River Bend's only black daughters, now a mother of two who'd planned to raise her own children anywhere else--their paths collide under Beth's father's roof. As one town struggles to contain all of their love...

"When we meet August "Gus" Molloy on the opening pages of CHEVY IN THE HOLE he's just overdosed at the Detroit restaurant where he works. Shortly after, he packs it in and returns home to his family for another shot at sobriety. There, he meets and falls quickly in love with Monae Livingston, an urban farmer trying to coax a tenuous rebirth from the damaged land. As Gus and Monae begin dreaming up an oasis together in Flint, the city's water supply...

Celia Alexander assumed she had faced the ultimate test of faith when her husband, Khalil, went to prison, and she's still trying to get her life back to normal in spite of her inability to forgive him. When she discovers that her husband is somehow connected to the disappearance of a young girl in Detroit, Celia soon discovers evil has no boundaries. She revitalizes a search that may be more than she can handle. Khalil Alexander may be incarcerated,...

After their mother dies of typhoid, Verna and her younger sister Carlie move with their father, a psychiatrist, and stern Aunt Maude to an asylum for the mentally ill in early-twentieth-century Michigan, where new ideas in the treatment of mental illness are being proposed, but old prejudices still hold sway.