Winner of the National Book Award Jesmyn Ward, two-time National Book Award winner and author of Sing, Unburied, Sing, delivers a gritty but tender novel about family and poverty in the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina. A hurricane is building over the Gulf of Mexico, threatening the coastal town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, and Esch's father is growing concerned. A hard drinker, largely absent, he doesn't show concern for much else. Esch and her three brothers are stocking food, but there isn't much to save. Lately, Esch can't keep down what food she gets; she's fourteen and pregnant. Her brother Skeetah is sneaking scraps for his prized pitbull's new litter, dying one by one in the dirt. Meanwhile, brothers Randall and Junior try to stake their claim in a family long on child's play and short on parenting. As the twelve days that make up the novel's framework yield to their dramatic conclusion, this unforgettable family--motherless children sacrificing for one another as they can, protecting and nurturing where love is scarce--pulls itself up to face another day. A big-hearted novel about familial love and community against all odds, and a wrenching look at the lonesome, brutal, and restrictive realities of rural poverty, Salvage the Bones is muscled with poetry, revelatory, and real.
Ward’s “lushly descriptive prose…and her prodigious talent and fearless portrayal of a world too often overlooked” (Essence) make this novel an essential addition to her incredible body of work.
Embracing the earthy and the ethereal, the comical and the poignant, Madeleine Is Sleeping is part fairy tale, part coming-of-age story, and above all, an adventure in the discovery of art, sexuality, community, and the self.
' Harriet TubmanIn five years, Jesmyn Ward lost five men in her life, to drugs, accidents, suicide, and the bad luck that can follow people who live in poverty, particularly black men.
Salvage the Bones: A Novel
Pregnant fifteen-year-old Esch and her family live in Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, which puts them in the path of Hurricane Katrina, and as they try to stock the small amount of food they have in preparation for the disaster, the family's ...
The novel follows the family through the aftermaths of the storm. The author had lived through the Katrina. When she realized how easily that huge storm had receded from public consciousness, the author decided to write this novel.
Elizabeth Kilcoyne’s Wake the Bones is a dark, atmospheric debut about the complicated feelings that arise when the place you call home becomes hostile.
Follows the experiences of a prospective college student who visits Los Angeles to meet the actor father he never knew, an encounter that introduces him to the gritty realities of show business and leads to a shattering revelation.
In his barracks, Walter Burke is trying to write a letter to the parents of a fallen soldier, an Alabama man who died in a muddy rice paddy.
In fact,” Smith volunteered as he examined the item more closely, “it's nearly like the one I purchased for my wife.” The jury tittered. “Well, it seems identical to the one I saw in her right hand.” Smith took the hanky and asked if ...