Song of Solomon

Macon "Milkman" Dead III grows up comfortable and detached — the son of the wealthiest Black landlord in his Michigan town, estranged from his eccentric aunt Pilate, and adrift in his own life without any clear sense of who he is or what he wants. When a story about a hidden stash of gold sends him south into rural Virginia, what begins as a treasure hunt turns into something else: a search for the truth about his family's past.

As Milkman traces his ancestry back through his father's and aunt's fractured memories, and further into local legend, he uncovers the story of his great-grandfather Solomon, a man whose disappearance became the stuff of a children's song and a piece of community folklore about a man who could fly. Along the way, Morrison moves through the interlinked lives of the Dead family and the community around them — his stern father Macon II, his commanding aunt Pilate, his childhood friend Guitar, and the women whose lives have been shaped and constrained by the men around them.

Blending realism with myth and the rhythms of African American oral tradition, Song of Solomon is Morrison's expansive novel about inheritance — what is passed down through families and communities, what's been buried, and what it means to finally claim it.