Author: jesmynward

A National Book Award winner that “puts Ward in fellowship with such forebears as Zora Neale Hurston and William Faulkner” (The New Yorker): The struggles and hopes of three generations of a Mississippi family unfold in this “searing, urgent read… It’s hard to imagine a more necessary book” (Celeste Ng).

Winner of the National Book AwardJesmyn Ward, two-time National Book Award winner and author of Sing, Unburied, Sing, delivers a gritty but tender novel about 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 … 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…

Named one of the Best Books of the Century by New York MagazineTwo-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward (Salvage the Bones, Sing, Unburied, Sing) contends with the deaths of five young men dear to her, and the risk of being a black man in the rural South.“We saw the lightning and that was the guns; and then we heard the thunder and that was the big guns; and then we heard the rain falling … and then we heard the rain falling and that was the blood falling; and when we came to get in the crops, it was…