Sugar

In the spring of 1940, in the small Black community of Bigelow, Arkansas, a girl named Jude Taylor is found murdered on the side of a road. Her body is brutally beaten, her eyes removed, and her genitalia severed. Black John, the local blacksmith, discovers her and brings the body to her parents, Pearl and Joe Taylor. The murder goes unsolved; it is 1940, the victim is a Black child, and authorities make only halfhearted efforts. Pearl is struck silent by grief. She lies in bed for nearly thirty days, then returns to daily life carrying the loss beside her in the space where Jude should have been.

Fifteen years later, in the spring of 1955, a woman named Sugar Lacey walks into Bigelow in spiked red heels, a blond wig, and a leopard print pocketbook, a Lucky Strike dangling from her painted lips. The townswomen despise her on sight, calling her slut and whore without introduction. Sugar moves into #10 Grove Street, next door to Pearl and Joe. Pearl, now sixty, watches from her hallway, stopped cold by something in Sugar's profile: For a split second, the stranger looks exactly like Jude.

Pearl and Joe share a deep, quiet love. Joe, a towering, soft-spoken man of sixty-two, returned from the war having fought alongside white soldiers who refused to share toilets with him at home but begged for his comfort as they lay dying. Pearl first heard his voice at the Rib Shack, a local restaurant where veterans gathered, and fell in love. He courted her with wildflowers, proposed on bended knee with a gold ring tied to a pink silk ribbon, and married her in the Baptist church.

Sugar spends her first days sitting in darkness, smoking and remembering her past. She was abandoned by her mother before the umbilical cord fell off. Three sisters in nearby Short Junction, May, Sara, and Ruby Lacey, took her in and raised her in a house with a long history as a brothel. Sugar never knew what a mother was. By puberty, the men who frequented the Lacey house began paying to use her body.

Pearl, compelled by Sugar's resemblance to Jude, visits with a sweet potato pie. The visit is a disaster: Pearl drops the pie, and Sugar slams the door in her face. Pearl returns with another pie, which Sugar angrily slaps onto Pearl's head. The absurdity makes both women laugh, and this shared laughter becomes a turning point. They agree to bake together, and Pearl cements a place in Sugar's life.

At fifteen, Sugar left Short Junction with a man who abandoned her at a St. Louis brothel run by Mary Bedford. Mary recognized Sugar's extraordinary singing voice and connected her with Al Schwartz, a record company president in Detroit. Schwartz demanded sexual favors before he would listen to Sugar sing, and when she refused, he dismissed her with a racial slur. Sugar gave up on singing and spent twelve years working the streets of Detroit and Chicago until a john slashed her neck with a switchblade and drove her back to St. Louis. She found Mary raising her granddaughter, Mercy. When Mary had a stroke, Sugar took over the household. Mary produced a telegram from the Lacey sisters: Sugar's mother had come looking for her. Sugar returned to Short Junction and learned that her mother, Bertie Mae, had arrived with terminal cancer, hoping to find her daughter. Bertie Mae died in the Lacey house, still waiting. She left Sugar the deed to the house in Bigelow, a photograph of herself, and no letter.

Back in Bigelow, Pearl and Sugar's friendship deepens as they share their pasts. But Pearl witnesses signs of Sugar's ongoing prostitution: men visiting at night. During a Saturday card game, Pearl's friends report that Sugar has been identified as a prostitute by name and address. Pearl defends Sugar and throws the women out. She later confronts Sugar directly, and in her agitation calls Sugar "Jude," then pours out the story of her daughter's murder. Sugar admits the truth about her livelihood. Pearl, following Joe's principle that friends forgive, reconciles with Sugar. She does not approve but believes Sugar can change.

Sugar dyes Pearl's hair, applies makeup, and takes her to the Memphis Roll, a juke joint where Sugar's singing brings down the house. Gossip about Pearl's transformation spreads through town. The Bigelow women confront Sugar at her door, demanding she leave. Sugar refuses and reveals she has slept with some of their husbands. They retreat in defeat. Sugar accompanies Pearl to church, where nearly all the men in the congregation, including Reverend Foster, are former clients. When Joe returns from his annual trip to Florida, Pearl initiates sex for the first time in fifteen years. Their intimacy is reborn.

At Thanksgiving, Pearl and Joe's son Seth Taylor arrives from New York. He initially treats Sugar with hostile suspicion, but over the holiday his demeanor softens, and he and Sugar fall for each other. At Hodges Lake, he asks Sugar to come to New York with him. She agrees.

That night, Sugar receives a call from Lappy Clayton, a volatile man who has supplied her with customers and drugs. He demands she service him, threatening to harm Pearl if she refuses. Sugar lets him in, rationalizing it will be the last time. Seth arrives to pick Sugar up for their planned evening, but she does not answer. When Lappy's car pulls up, the Taylors watch from their yard as Sugar opens the door for him. Seth, devastated, drives away despite Pearl's pleas. During the assault, Lappy reveals he murdered Jude fifteen years earlier. He beats Sugar savagely, slashing her with a blade. Pearl, watching from her window, sees Lappy leave before dawn covered in blood. He turns and waves at her through the curtain before driving away. Pearl runs into Sugar's house and finds her in blood-soaked sheets. Sugar's eyes flutter open, and Pearl releases the anguished wail locked in her throat for fifteen years.

Joe and Pearl nurse Sugar back to health. Sugar decides to leave Bigelow, carrying Lappy's confession as a secret she will never share, knowing the truth would destroy Pearl and Joe. Before she goes, a package arrives from the Lacey sisters containing dozens of letters from Bertie Mae and a photograph of a young Bertie Mae beside a tall, handsome man. On the back is written: "Me and Joe 1924." Sugar realizes Joe Taylor is her biological father and Seth is her half-brother.

On Christmas Eve, Sugar addresses the congregation at Bigelow's First Baptist Church, thanking Pearl and Joe for treating her like family and apologizing for the things she did and did not do. She walks out. Pearl releases fifteen years of grief in a wail that shakes the building. Sugar, already outside, does not hear it.

Nearly a year later, in the fall of 1956, a real estate agent showing #10 Grove Street finds a burnt photograph on the floor and hands it to Joe. Joe stares at the image of himself and Bertie Mae, taken decades earlier during a brief affair in Short Junction while he was laying railroad tracks. He had suspected the truth from the moment he saw Sugar but convinced himself otherwise. Now the photograph confirms it: Sugar is his daughter. Joe places the picture in his breast pocket and walks toward home, where he will tell Pearl the truth and ask for her forgiveness.