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 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.
more
The writing is original, beautiful, fresh and alive. The characters are unforgettable, born of their gulf coast setting and the author’s lived hurricane Katrina experience. This novel is simply a spectacular achievement; it expanded my human awareness.
This award-winning novel needs no introduction. Ward’s stunning prose and searching characterization are exceeded only by her talent for conjuring sympathy for people who live outside the bounds of mainstream tolerance. This is a must-read.
WOW! This book puts you in the middle of Hurricane Katrina with the people who were affected the most, the ones unable to escape. It’s told from the perspective of Esch, a motherless teenager living with her hard drinking father and three brothers.
The story builds up to the day Katrina hits, with the family struggling to survive and the father always preparing for the big storm but never quite completing his projects.
My heart went out to Esch and her brothers and the loss of their childhoods. This book will resonate for a long time in my mind.
A beautiful book that introduces you to a young girl, her brother, and his beloved dog, China, in the days before and the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and makes you feel as if you live in this place with them, with all their dreams and heartaches. This book has an ending that I will carry with me for the rest of my life.
The only female in the midst of a bunch of boys, Esch knows how to take care of herself. Losing her mother while giving birth to her youngest brother, she grows up way to fast, but with an abusive drunk father, what choice does she have? With the help of her two older brothers, an unbreakable family bond is created, even when their world is threatened by hurricane Katrina.
In “Salvage the Bones”, Jesmyn Ward takes you to the middle of an ever-growing storm, and not just relating to the weather. Held inside the mind of the main character, the reader glimpses what it is like to live in poverty within a small town of Mississippi. Jesmyn demonstrates what is required for a family of five to survive through strength, agility, and above all, love.
Yet, this was a difficult read. Not only were numerous triggers included from abuse, dog fights, stealing, and sexual misconduct, the profanity was so frequent, one can easily lose track of what is happening. Given a mere 2 out of 5 stars, this book was overcome with distain and vulgarity.
The book has a great storyline with lots of potential; but unfortunately, it was lost between the pages of raunchy words. If profanity and the above-mentioned triggers do not bother you, then this book may be for you, however, it was not for me.
I think this is the best novel I have read in a long time. And I have read some wonderful novels. Really, of course, I mean “listened to” as an audible book, and that might have been significant since the narrator, January LaVoy, read some sections with such pitch-perfect emotion that I felt I was listening to a play. This wasn’t overdone. Just at the right moments. The language was beautiful, lush, controlled. The story just kept gathering more power and momentum. Some of the scenes—terrible and beautiful.
Having read Ward’s nonfiction The Men We Reaped, about the young Black men lost to violence in her family and community, I am struck in this book by the love that the young protagonist has toward her brothers and the young Black men in her community. What a gift to experience this love and a gift to express this love and a gift to read about this love. Ward also writes intensely and gorgeously about romantic and sexual love in Salvage the Bones, but I particularly appreciated all the other forms, spilling out over the landscape, mother and daughter, sister and brother, boy and dog. Love everywhere. Also carelessness, poverty, and hurricanes.
Salvage The Bones is the tale of a poor family struggling to survive in Bois Sauvage, Louisiana, weeks before Katrina came bearing down on them. It begins when a teenage girl, Esch, realizes she is pregnant because it was easier to let them than tell them no. Her oldest brother, Henry, hopes to be a basketball star even though he can barely afford shoes. In contrast, her other brother, Skeetah, is the proud owner of a female pit bull named China whose puppies, he hopes, will bring the family some much-needed revenue. Jesmyn Ward’s raw description of the puppies’ birth, then China having her breasts ripped off while fighting in the pit, is gut-wrenching and hard to read. Esch and her family live in a virtual junkyard while their father drinks beer and half-heartedly warns of the category five hurricane threatening. The five kids do not heed the danger until the storm is upon them, then they are forced to fight for their very lives. Vivid, bloody, and sometimes eloquent, this is a tale that will stay with you long after you turn the last page.
I really felt the sadness of this story. Haunting and beautiful prose.
Loved it. Great read
Literature as bold and heartfelt as Salvage the Bones deserves every accolade it has received. Having earned the National Book Award, Jesmyn Ward’s novel of sweeping humanity captures and preserves the memory of the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina. However, that harrowing event in American history serves only as the backdrop for the immersive, arresting story that Ward offers of family, community, and love.
The unforgettable voice of Esch Batiste narrates the twelve intense days that comprise the framework of the novel. At fifteen years old Esch is pregnant, lonely, and unsure of the future, the same as her three brothers. Randall, the oldest sibling, has aspirations of playing college hoops, while the second oldest, Skeetah, raises his beloved pit bull, China, to withstand the trauma of dogfighting. Esch’s third brother, Junior, is the youngest of the four siblings, and he has relied on the others for his upbringing. Since their mother passed while birthing Junior, their father has looked to survive the tragedy through alcohol and isolation.
With adversity building around each member of the Batiste family, Ward employs a magnifying eye of details to examine their struggles and the challenges of the larger community of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi. She shows us humanity with all its love and loss, all its pain and sorrow, all its compassion and forgiveness, and all its heartbreak and hope. Moreover, the most stunning aspect of the narrative is, perhaps, the beautiful language Ward gives to Esch’s voice. It possesses a musicality and poeticism that elevate Salvage the Bones to the status of great literature, worthy of a distinction as classic.
Being an animal lover; it was hard for me to read some parts. However, the characters were mostly well developed, and once I started I had to finish this book.