Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward

Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward

Winner of the National Book Award
A New York Times Best Book of the 21st Century
An Atlantic Great American Novel of the Last 100 Years

"A taut, wily novel, smartly plotted and voluptuously written . . . Jesmyn Ward makes beautiful music, plays deftly with her reader's expectations." -Parul Sehgal, New York Times

The National Book Award-winning novel from the author of Let Us Descend and Men We Reaped-a gritty but tender story of 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.

JESMYN WARD is a professor of creative writing at Tulane University and holds an MFA from the University of Michigan. She is the author of the 2011 National Book Award-winning novels Where the Line Bleeds and Salvage the Bones, as well as the 2017 National Book Award-winning novel Sing, Unburied, Sing. She is also the editor of The Fire This Time, an anthology of short stories, and the author of Men We Reaped, a memoir that was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Ward was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University from 2008 to 2010. Ward received the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2016. She is a Mississippi resident.