In the winter of 1926, when everybody everywhere sees nothing but good things ahead, Joe Trace, a middle-aged waiter who moonlights as a door-to-door salesman of Cleopatra beauty products, shoots his teenage lover to death. At the funeral, Joe's wife, Violet, attacks the girl's corpse. This story of love and obsession by Toni Morrison brings us back and forth in time, as a narrative is assembled from the emotions, hopes, fears, and deep realities of black urban life.