Sula

He became a drug addict who steals and lies. Eva had gone into his room one night only to find him in a trance. She held him in her arms and said her last good-byes. She then pours kerosene on him and lights him on fire. After the death of her favorite child, Plum, she stops going downstairs. Sula's mother, Hannah, is a deeply sensual woman who sleeps with all the men in The Bottom. The women in the community like Hannah, for she is not. She does not want to possess their husbands but only to sleep with them. Sula overheard her mother saying that she does not like her. Sula, however, does not feel close to her mother and views her in detachment. Therefore, on the same day, Sula and Nel were playing with a little boy named Chicken Little down by the river. Sula was holding him by his hands and swinging him around. However, she loses her grip, and the young boy falls in the water and does not come up. Not knowing where to turn, Sula goes to Shadrack's cabin for help, but Shadrack did not want to help them. So, they both decided not to tell what had happened. Nel assures Sula that it was just an accident, but Sula feels terrible. During Chicken Little's emotional funeral, which had left the two girls changed forever, were numb and silent.
             The setting of this novel takes place in a well-known area known as "The Bottom" between the years of 1917-1965. The Bottom is mostly a black community in Ohio, situated in the hills above the mostly white, wealthier community of Medallion. The Bottom first became a community when a slave owner promised his slave freedom and a piece of rich bottomland in exchange for some difficult work. The slave did the work and got his freedom; however the slave-owner played a trick on him in regard to the land. He gave the freed slave land at the top of a hill, rather than in the rich bottomland that is good for farming. Convincing the slave that the land was worthwhile by claiming that it was hilly, the master gave the former slave a poor stretch of hilly land saying it was closer to heaven.