TAR BABY

Into a white millionaire's Caribbean mansion comes Jadine, a sophisticated graduate of the Sorbonne, art historian-a black American now living in Paris and Rome. Then there's Son, a criminal on the run, uneducated, violent, contemptuous-a young American black of extreme beauty from small-town Florida. As Morrison follows their affair, she charts all the nuances of obligation and betrayal between blacks and whites, masters and servants, and men and women.