New novel 'Home' brings Toni Morrison back to Ohio

 OBERLIN, Ohio – At 81, Toni Morrison, who's won the Nobel Prize for her novels about the sorrows and joys of African-American life, has a new book and a new hip.
 
 

Her 10th novel, Home (Knopf, $24), released Tuesday, features an angry and troubled black Korean War veteran in the 1950s. It's set mostly in Georgia, where Morrison has never lived. But it's brought her from her home in New York back to Ohio, where she was born and raised.

In an interview during a three-day visit to Oberlin College, she says that despite a hip replacement, her back is "problematic." Her diagnosis: "Two little discs seem to be engaged or something." She gets around by wheelchair or supported on the arms of others.MORE