As girls Nel & Sula shared each other's discoveries & dreams in the poor black mid-West of their childhood. Then Sula ran away to live her dreams & Nel got married. Ten years later Sula returns & no one least of all Nel trusts her. SULA is the story of the fear that makes people accept self-pity; the fear that will not countenance escape & that justifies itself through myth & legend. Sula herself is cast as a witch & demon by the people who resent her strength. They attack her with the most pervasive weapon of all the weapon of language & story. But Sula is a woman of power a wayward force who challenges the smallness of a world that tries to hold her down.