The year is 1873. Sethe lives at 124 Bluestone Road—referred to as simply “124”—with her lone surviving daughter, Denver. The house is haunted by a ghost, the spirit of Sethe’s dead daughter. The daughter is known only as “Beloved” as indicated on her tombstone. Sethe did not have enough money for an engraving on the tombstone, and in return for those seven letters she traded sex with the engraver.

When the novel begins, Sethe’s two teenage boys, Howard and Buglar, have already left the house, fleeing the ghost that lives within it. Sethe’s mother-in-law, Grandma Baby Suggs, passed away almost 10 years earlier, and Sethe believes her husband Halle abandoned her long ago. The ghost makes itself known in frightening ways, at one point slamming the family dog Here Boy into the wall, breaking two of his legs and dislocating his eye. Sethe confidently handles the situation, knocking Here Boy unconscious with a hammer so she can set the broken bones and re-position his eyeball. Here Boy recovers physically but never enters the house again.

One day, Sethe encounters Paul D, a former enslaved man from Sweet Home, the Kentucky plantation where she was also once enslaved.