Salvage the Bones: A Novel

Jesmyn Ward

Aug 2011 · Bloomsbury Publishing USA

About this ebook

Winner of the National Book Award

Jesmyn 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 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.

Ratings and reviews

It started as a summer assignment for my AP English class this year, but it grew to be much more than that as I grew to enjoy the book and couldn't stop reading it. I stayed up until 1:00am reading this book and I didn't have to do a summary or reflection the next day too. Only wished if they said what happened to skeetah, china, and esch at the end instead of it being left open ended

Heart wrenching and truly a tribute to the loyalty & love of family. The harshness of poverty & the human lives that it so deeply effects are so clearly brought forth in this novel. Not sure that my rating of 3 stars is accurate. The author's ability to so deeply & realistically portray stark reality was "gifted-writing" .........I can see this book being a required text for students pursuing courses of study in "humanities".......

Beautifully written. So deep in many levels stayed up all night finishing couldn't put it down

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.