Salvage the Bones

Winner of the National Book Award
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.

Author: Jesmyn Ward
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Published: 04/24/2012
Pages: 288
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.65lbs
Size: 8.25h x 5.60w x 0.75d
ISBN: 9781608196265

Accelerated Reader:
Reading Level: 5.3
Point Value: 13
Interest Level: Upper Grade
Quiz #/Name: 152039 / Salvage the Bones


Review Citation(s):
Essence 07/01/2012 pg. 60

About the Author
Jesmyn Ward received her MFA from the University of Michigan and is currently a professor of creative writing at Tulane University. She is the author of the novels Where the Line Bleeds and Salvage the Bones, which won the 2011 National Book Award, and Sing, Unburied, Sing, which won the 2017 National Book Award. She is also the editor of the anthology The Fire This Time and the author of the memoir Men We Reaped, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. From 2008-2010, Ward had a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. She was the John and Renée Grisham Writer in Residence at the University of Mississippi for the 2010-2011 academic year. In 2016, the American Academy of Arts and Letters selected Ward for the Strauss Living Award. She lives in Mississippi.