The Color Purple is a 1982 novel by Alice Walker about two African-American sisters and their struggles against sexism and racism. Told as an epistolary novel, The Color Purple tells of Celie's oppression by the men in her life and her attempts to protect her younger and prettier sister Nettie. Like her father, Celie's husband Albert mistreats her, though she finds some redemption in her relationship with a man named Shug. Nettie travels to Africa as a missionary where she finds less racism but plenty of sexism.
Natalie Babbitt's fantasy novel Tuck Everlasting tells the story of 10 year old Winnie Foster, who meets a boy names Jesse Tuck who claims to be 104 years old. Jesse reveals that him, and his whole family, gained immortality from drinking from a magical spring. Winnie learns to love the Tucks, and is forced with the hardest decision she'll ever have to make: a normal life, or one of immortality with Jesse.