Still feeling the echoes of finishing Toni Morrison’s Beloved this week. And the echoes of having been so wrong about how it would end. (Semi-spoiler ahead if you haven’t read it – and if you haven’t YOU SHOULD.)

I listened to it slowly as an audiobook, read by Toni Morrison herself. Caught up in a dark and dreamy daze for two weeks of morning commutes. Captivated and suspended awaiting the cataclysmic ending that had to be ahead. I kept saying, “This isn’t going to end well.” How could a book that made the horrors of slavery and racism so much realer than real have a happy ending?

How could I be so wrong?

Because. How could a book about the people who endured and survived the horrors of slavery and racism have an ending about anything other than resilience and strength?

Resilience, strength… and an unquiet ghost who still roams.

Realer than real. The only possible ending.