Dec 30

Dec 30 Salvage the Bones

Author: Jesmyn Ward
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

Click above to buy this book from my Bookshop.org shop, which supports independent bookstores (not Amazon). You can also find it via your favorite indie bookstore here.

Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

Cover Description

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. While 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 comprise the novel's framework yield to the final day and Hurricane Katrina, the unforgettable family at the novel's heart--motherless children sacrificing for each other as they can, protecting and nurturing where love is scarce--pulls itself up to struggle for another day. A wrenching look at the lonesome, brutal, and restrictive realities of rural poverty, Salvage the Bone is muscled with poetry, revelatory, and real.

TL;DR Review

I’m late to the Jesmyn Ward party, but holy moly am I HERE NOW. What a standout novel. Such incredible characters, pacing, language, the whole nine yards.

For you if: You like brave, exquisitely written literary fiction.

Full Review

“If the scrapes were on the front of our knees, she would put our dirty feet in the middle of her chest to clean the wounds, and we could feel her heart beating, strong as the thud of the ground when we walked, through our soles.”

There are most certainly many people who have praised this book much more thoroughly than I can. But it’s just not every day that you read a novel like Salvage the Bones. It’s not every year that the world births a writing talent like Jesmyn Ward.

Salvage the Bones is about a teen girl named Esch, who lives near the coast of Mississippi with her father and three brothers. Her mother died from labor complications when her youngest brother was born. She’s also constantly surrounded brothers’ friends, one of whom is the father of the baby growing in her belly. At the same time, Hurricane Katrina is coming, and one brother’s prize pit bull just had very valuable puppies.

This novel packs such a punch, and in less than 300 pages, too. The prose is incredible, lines like, “But the wind grabs my voice up and snatches it out and over the pines, and drops it there to die.” She does so much in so little space. You could cut the tension on every page with a knife; it’s coiled tight like a spring. So much emotion, so much visceral sensory detail, so much unsaid.

Okay I’m using a lot of superlative language lol but just — ahhhh, just read it.

Warning: There is a very graphic and violent dog fighting scene in this book.