Seven years later, in 1988, Morrison published her next novel, Beloved, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Based on the life of Margaret Garner, an escaped Kentucky slave, Beloved tells the harrowing story of a mother who kills her infant daughter rather than see her enslaved; she is forced to come to terms with her desperate act when, twenty years later, the dead daughter's ghost returns to haunt her and demands an explanation for her murder. In preparation for the book, Morrison researched the shameful history of the institution of slavery and found that no memorials existed to mark that history. She decided that her book would provide such a memorial.
Morrison's sixth novel, Jazz, published in 1992, explores the relationship between Joe and Violet Trace, a middle-aged couple who find their way back to each other after the husband has a tragic affair with an eighteen-year-old girl. Set in Harlem during the 1930s, the novel unfolds as a series of scenes, or jazz "riffs."
Morrison followed Jazz with Paradise. Published in January 1998, Paradise completes the trilogy that includes Beloved and Jazz. Set in the 1970s, it tells the story of four young women who are brutally attacked in a convent near Ruby, Oklahoma, a fictional town populated exclusively by African Americans. In writing the novel, Morrison says that she wanted to understand "the love of God and love for fellow human beings."
