She developed a love-hate relationship with her hometown after having been bullied at public school by black classmates and, subsequently, by white students while attending a private school paid for by her mother’s employer. Jesmyn Ward grew up in DeLisle, a small rural community in Mississippi. Her other two books include her first novel, Where the Line Bleeds (2008) and a memoir, The Men We Reaped (2013), about the deaths of her brother and other young male friends. Salvage the Bones won in 2011 (it also won a 2012 Alex Award), and Sing, the Unburied, Sing, won in 2017.

Jesmyn Ward is an American novelist and two-time National Book Award winner for fiction.

Currently-lives in Mississippi commutes to Mobile, Alabama.

Awards-2 National Book Awards ( others below).

Education-B.A., Stanford University M.F.A., University of Michigan.

Meanwhile, brothers Randall and Junior try to stake their claim in a family long on child's play and short on parenting.Īs 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.Ī 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. Her brother Skeetah is sneaking scraps for his prized pitbull's new litter, dying one by one in the dirt. Lately, Esch can't keep down what food she gets she's fourteen and pregnant. A hard drinker, largely absent, he doesn't show concern for much else.Įsch and her three brothers are stocking food, but there isn't much to save. A hurricane is building over the Gulf of Mexico, threatening the coastal town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, and Esch's father is growing concerned.

Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward