I selected Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward for my review this month. Ward is a Black writer with an unfaltering and unapologetic voice.

She is an associate professor of English at Tulane University. Salvage the Bones is her second novel. It won a National Book Award for Fiction in 2011 and a 2012 Alex Award. Her novel, Sing, Unburied, Sing won a National Book Award for Fiction in 2017 making her the first woman to win two National Awards for Fiction.

Salvage the Bones tells the story of Esch Batiste an impoverished Mississippi Gulf coast teenager, her two older brothers, Randall and Skeetah, her younger brother, Junior and her father during the 10 days leading up to Hurricane Katrina and the day after.

Fifteen year old Esch has grown up with the responsibility of taking care of her family. Her mother died of complications following the home birth of her fourth child, Junior. Esch remembers all the blood and her father rushing her mother and the baby to the hospital in his truck only to come home later that day without her mother. He showed Esch and Randall how to hold, feed and care for the baby before retreating inside a bottle to combat his grief. The siblings form a close bond to help them cope with their loss.

Esch reads Greek tragedies and dreams of having the power of Medea. She longs for a better life, but feels stuck. Esch thinks of her mother often and tries to hold onto the memories of a happy family with parents who were deeply in love.

At age 12 Esch was taken advantage of by one of her brother’s friends. He didn’t actually force himself on her, but she didn’t feel like she had the power or self-worth to stand up for herself and say “no.” Boys talk and she gets a reputation as an “easy” girl. Each time she feels powerless to stop their advances. When Skeetah’s friend Manny makes his move, Esch wants him to be the one who sees her in her beauty and power. She wants Manny to look at her with the love she remembers in her father’s eyes when he looked at her mother. She stops seeing other boys. Despite using condoms, Esch gets pregnant. She hides her pregnancy under her brothers’ hand me down t-shirts and tries to pretend it’s not happening just like the tropical storm building power off the gulf coast.

While Esch’s father tries to make preparations for the storm in between drinking binges, her brother Skeetah is preoccupied with the birth of his dog China’s puppies. China is a pit bull terrier. Skeetah fights her for money and hopes to sell her pups. China is his most prized possession and in some strange way he loves her. She signifies the strength, power and control he longs for, but is denied by his poverty.

This aspect of the story is hard for me because of my fierce opposition to dog fighting. I was raised on the gulf coast of Florida and heard many stories about dog fighting rings. Unfortunately, it is still an accepted practice in many cultures.

Esch watches China with her pups and wonders how she will be with her own child. Will she protect it with her life? If there was a way to safely end her pregnancy could she do it? How will she be able to tell her father and brothers about her pregnancy?

Esch draws inspiration from China and Medea to finally confront Manny who wants nothing to do with her when he finds out she’s pregnant. Esch’s strength and rage mirrors the power of China in the ring and the destructive force of Hurricane Katrina which devastates her home and seems to destroy everything her family possesses.

I would love to tell you more, but you have to read this book to understand the message of hope woven through the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and Esch’s bittersweet coming of age story. Despite everything… or many because of everything, hope survives as a whisper of a promise about love and survival.

Other works by Jesmyn Ward include:

Where the Line Bleeds

Men we Reaped: A Memoir

The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race edited by Jesmyn Ward – Ward is also one of several contributors to this work

Sing, Unburied, Sing

Jesmyn Ward photo:

url=https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jesmyn_Ward.jpeg][img]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Jesmyn_Ward.jpeg[/img][/url]

[url=https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jesmyn_Ward.jpeg]Jesmyn Ward[/url]

Jesmimi [CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]

Jesmyn Ward and her book jacket:

http://www.tulane.edu/sla/newsletters/apr2014.html*

*No copyright infringement intended