This short Novella follows brother and sister Frank and Cee Money. Frank has returned from the Korean War with wounds unseen. Having lost his two best friends, one who died right in his arms, Frank is haunted by the things he saw and the things he did during the war. What we would now call PTSD has led him to drink himself into oblivion. He seems to have found sanctuary and peace with Lily out in the Pacific Northwest. But when he receives a letter that his sister Cee "be dead" he knows he has to hurry to save her.
Crossing the country has a black man in the 1950s is not easy and Frank is quickly waylaid into a mental institution. His escape and eventual arrival in Atlanta, Georgia is a master class as only Toni Morrison can present in the large and small cruelties of living in Jim Crow, segregated and overtly racist America.
In the meantime, we're told that Cee left home as soon as she could, accompanied by a young man who professed love, but really had his eye on her father's car. Abandoned in Atlanta, Cee is determined to make her own life rather than return to the abusive taunts of her step-grandmother. Cee knows she needs a better job to make ends meet, so she applied to be a doctors assistant at a suburban home-office of Dr. Beau. Only, well Dr. Beau shows a little to much interest in his new assistant's anatomy and too little interest in her status as a human being. So this is how Cee becomes ill, only it's never really detailed, it doesn't need to be. One can google medical experiments of black women and find enough historical details to choke the joy from you for the day.
This book is as much about Cee as it is about Frank, and their mutual healing after trauma. It's a shame that the brief descriptions offered mention Cee not at all, since her journey is just as moving.
In such a short time, Toni Morrison paints a vivid and dense picture of redemptive sibling and self loves.
4/5 Stars.
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