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A Novel
by Jesmyn Ward
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 fifteen 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, set in the lead-up to Hurricane Katrina, 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.
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National Book Awards, 2011
"Starred Review. [A] poetic second novel … [main character] Esch traces in the minutiae of every moment of every scene of her life the thin lines between passion and violence, love and hate, life and death … her voice …[gives] its cast of small lives a huge resonance." - Publishers Weekly
"This looks both beautiful and heartbreaking and would be excellent for book clubs." - Library Journal
"Author Ward has an unfortunate tendency to overwrite, and this coming-of-age story tends at times to get lost in its style." - Booklist
"Powerful, tense, and absorbing; Jesmyn Ward develops the characters so well, and these people are survivors. The pacing is excellent—although you know the storm is coming, you are still consumed by the tension. And the writing of the storm scene is brilliant. I was in the water with them." - Louise Jones, Northshire Bookstore, Manchester Center, VT
"I started reading at seven thirty Saturday morning, thinking I'd give myself an hour to read before doing the ever-mounting list of chores around the house … Four hours later I could not put it down until I finished! Reminds me of Daniel Woodrell, Flannery O'Connor, and others. What an authentic voice and what a beautiful writer." - Dawn Braasch, Bunch of Grapes Bookstore, Vineyard Haven, MA
"It's a taut, powerful novel with characters that draw you wholly into a world that while alien to most readers is presented so compellingly that one feels a strong connection to Esch and her family's place and circumstance. Just like the hurricane that you know is coming, there is a palpable tension that moves the story forward and makes you want to hurry through, but at the same time, there are so many great sentences and turns of phrase that you feel you must slow down and savor the words on the page. I also really love the mythology references and the way they gel with the modern-day storyline." - Cody Morrison, Square Books, Oxford, Mississippi
"Jesmyn Ward is an extraordinary writer. While Salvage the Bones is not a pretty story, it is so well written and compelling that I had a hard time putting it down. Ms. Ward has a terrific ear for dialogue, and you meet characters not found in most other writing. I love Esch. She is smart and real, and her relationship with her siblings is beautifully rendered." - Korje Guttormsen, Books Inc., San Francisco, CA
"With Salvage the Bones, Jesmyn Ward has written the best sort of novel—a beautiful, important book that's both unflinching and tender, heartbreaking and triumphant. A lyrical and riveting testament to the strength of the human spirit, as well as the power of family and community. Ward's paragraphs are like songs, lifting us even as the authenticity of this world and these characters keeps the ground in clear sight. This is an extraordinary book by an extraordinary writer." - Skip Horack, author of The Southern Cross and The Eden Hunter
"Jesmyn Ward writes like an angel with a knife to your throat, compelling you with exquisite language and a clear voice to go where she goes, to see what she sees. Salvage the Bones is at turns unsettling and uplifting—raw and honest as a dogfight, lyrical as a poem. It cuts through the clichés about poverty to arrive at a place of shocking recognition: that at the end of the day love and loyalty to family are all that sustain us." - Ken Wells, author of Meely LaBauve
"A fiercely beautiful portrait of lives caught quite literally in the maelstrom that was Hurricane Katrina. Salvage the Bones more than lives up to the promise so evident in Jesmyn Ward's much-praised first novel, Where the Line Bleeds. It surpasses that promise, and does so in one deft stride. Deeply felt and bristling with breathtaking imagery, Salvage the Bones will hold its readers utterly riveted to the very last page." - Travis Holland, author of The Archivist's Story
This information about Salvage the Bones was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Beowulf Sheehan
Jesmyn Ward received her MFA from the University of Michigan and has received the MacArthur Genius Grant, a Stegner Fellowship, a John and Renee Grisham Writers Residency, the Strauss Living Prize, and the 2022 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. She is the historic winner—first woman and first Black American—of two National Book Awards for Fiction for Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017) and Salvage the Bones (2011). She is also the author of the novel Where the Line Bleeds and the memoir Men We Reaped, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and won the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize and the Media for a Just Society Award. She is currently a professor of creative writing at Tulane University and lives in Mississippi.
Name Pronunciation
Jesmyn Ward: JEZ-min
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