This is the family saga of the McAllan family and the Jacksons, their black sharecroppers. It takes place in Mississippi after WWII. ( )

This book was a surprisingly good read! Set in the South just after WWII, it deals with racism, financial and physical struggle, friendship, and love.
Memphis bred, Laura McAllen never expected to marry, but then Henry comes along and treats her with love and kindness. Although she doesn't know what to expect from marriage, she learns and accepts her new husband. Then he drops a bomb - they are moving to a farm in the Mississippi Delta. He never consulted her and she is fiercely angry,but won't show it. She bites her tongue & hopes for the best, but the farm is a disaster and she is devastated. On top of this, her lazy, opinionated, and miserable father-in-law will be living with them as well. She is appalled at the situation, until Jamie, her brother-in-law returns from the war to live on the farm with them. He is the bright light in her life, and she realizes that she is in love with him. Jamie returns her feelings, but is a disaster, emotionally, due to the war. He drinks too much, he sleeps around, but the real issue is that he makes friends with Ronsel, the son of the black share-farmers on their land. Even though Ronsel fought in the war, is polite, and well-behaved man, he is still treated as a lower class citizen in this small Mississippi town. Their friendhip is entirely unacceptable to many of the leading white men in town, including Laura's father-in-law. The events that occur in this book are shocking, yet so close to the truth that it is scary. ( )

Slow to get into, but by the end transformative in a way that was deeply satisfying. This book stayed with me. ( )

Each chapter is told from a different person's perspective. Laura marries Henry but gets more than she bargains for when Henry moves her from the city to a remote farm (no water or electricity!) where she also has to try to get along with Henry's Pappy who is a very ornery man and his charming brother Jamie. One of their tenants on the farm is Hap, his wife Florence and their children, including their grown son Ronsel who has been serving in the first Black infantry in WWII. A great plot that the author unfolds in an effortless way. A truly good story that I kept wanting to get back to. ( )

loved it... so vived ( )

Mudbound starts off in an ominous mood, with two brothers burying their father. The weather in the Mississippi Delta has been rainy for the previous three days, but they have finally gotten the break in the weather they were looking for, so the brothers decide it's best if they complete the necessary digging as quickly as possible... In a shifting, kaleidoscopic viewpoint, the story is told piece by piece, while suspense builds. Laura McAllan's voice holds the package together - she both begins at the true beginning and fills in some of the details left out of the other characters' chapters. We soon discover that the old man is both abusive and racist, and that even his own family despises him.

Being a resident of the real Mississippi Delta, I feel obligated to point out that the author has taken some liberty with her geography. In reality, there is a Marietta, Mississippi - near which the story says the farm, Mudbound, is located - but Marietta is not as close to Greenville as Ms Jordan would have you believe. I will forgive her that discrepancy for giving us this wonderful novel... a little slight of hand with the location of the towns mentioned doesn't harm the story...

Mudbound has the flavor of a historical novel blended with mystery and suspense all in the same tightly written package. The characters are fully fleshed and of both types, those you love and those you love to hate. Long before the story ends, you'll figure out what's inevitably going to happen... yet there's still a compulsion to continue reading. A surprise is buried in the twisted ending which will leave you feeling both shocked and devastated, yet that ending is wholly appropriate to this compelling tale.

This isn't a YA book by any stretch of the imagination and is also not recommended for those sensitive to violence. Yet with that caviat in mind, I do recommend this book to the majority of readers looking for something that doesn't fit into the "light and fluffy" category.

This review has also been published on Dragonviews ( )

Henry McAllen has a solid job and lives in an urban environment. But he loves the earth and longs to have it fall through his fingers as he farms the Mississippi soil. A wounded WWI vet, he makes the decision to buy a farm and move his wife and two girls to rural Mississippi in the years following WWII.

His wife Laura is happy living in the city and stunned when Henry makes the decision to move without consulting her. To make matters worse, Henry's mean and racist father will be accompanying them. Laura finds it impossible to learn to love the land and longs to return to the city. Upon seeing the home she is to live in, she remarks:

"To me, it looked no different from the other land we'd passed. There were brown fields and unpainted sharecroppers' shacks with dirt yards. Women who might have been any age from thirty to sixty hung laundry from sagging clotheslines while gaggles of dirty barefoot children watched listlessly from the porch. After a time we came to a shack that was larger than the others, though no less decrepit. It had a deserted air."

Not until the arrival of Henry's brother Jamie, a WWII bomber pilot who is trying to forget those years but is haunted by the demons of his past, does Laura see a reprieve from her discouraging situation.

Hap and Florence Jackson are tenant farmers on Henry's land. Their son, Ronsel, returns from the war to help his parents, and is reminded quickly of the cruelty of Delta justice.

Hillary Jordan's debut novel, winner of the Bellwether Prize for fiction, revolves around these characters, who tell the story from their own points of view. She expertly develops the themes of loss, forgiveness, and the fleeting idea of home and how its meaning changes according to time and circumstance. Jordan also deftly illustrates the idea of man vs. man and man vs. nature with distinct clarity. Laura decides to start her story at the beginning:

"My father-in-law was murdered because I was born plain rather than pretty. That's one possible beginning. There are others: Because Henry saved Jamie from drowning in the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. Because Pappy sold the land that should have been Henry's. Because Jamie flew too many bombing missions in the war. Because a Negro named Ronsel Jackson shone too brightly. Because a man neglected his wife, and a father betrayed his son, and a mother exacted vengeance. I suppose the beginning depends on who's telling the story."

It is impossible to believe that this is Hillary Jordan's first published novel. Her storytelling abilites are only surpassed by her lyrical writing and nothing can prepare you for the stunning conclusion. Highly recommended. ( )

This story is tragic on so many levels; all beautifully woven to create a sadly true picture of rural life in the 1940s' South, and the injustice that was an accepted part of life there. The book is aptly titled - all the characters are bound together by the land they share, which each either desires, despises, or simply tolerates. This is the story of two families, one white and one black, who live on and work a farm together. It is also the story of a husband and wife, of two brothers and a loveless father, of two protective mothers, and of two sons returning from the war - not physically wounded, but forever scarred by their experiences. Hillary Jordan has skillfully written the characters with depth and irony. The reader is soon drawn in to their story, told by each in alternating chapters. ( )

Mudbound is the story of two families, white and black, living on the same land in the Mississippi Delta just after World War II. Written from multiple perspectives, the shared experiences of the families are marred by racism and bigotry. Each family sent a son to war and both men returned dramatically changed by thier experiences. Their friendship is not accepted by the small-minded, prejudiced townspeople causing turmoil and tragedy. ( )

It's 1946 in Mississippi and the McAllan family live on their farm - in a shack with no running water or electricity. The Jacksons, tenants on the McAllan's land, farm as well. Both of these families have sons return home from the war who have personal struggles of their own, let alone the adjustment of merging back into the ways of the land. A relationship develops between the two sons and the intertwined families experience the tragedy of racism, which is told from the point of view of all those involved (black, white, male and female) via alternating chapters.

Jordan's writing placed me back in the not-so-far past with realistic characters and setting. The visit was not a pleasant one, but one that gave me great perspective. There were several complex issues seamlessly interwoven throughout the book, all of which created emotions in me. Jordan has impressive talent and I eagerly await her next novel. This successful Southern read goes on my Best Reads of 2008 list! (4.5)

Originally posted on: "Thoughts of Joy..." ( )

WINNER OF THE BELLWETHER PRIZE FOR FICTION
Mudbound by Hillary Jordan (Book Review)
This debut novel Mudbound has rightly won many literary awards and praises from literary critics. It is published by Windmill and its ISBN is 0099524686. The book begins with a grave scene and each character tells in their own voice the story of how they arrived at the pitiless burial of their father. The farm Mudbound is situated in Delta in the US in 1946 at the end of World War 11 and deals with family dynamics and racism. Two heroes Jamie and Ronsel return from war with their own scars but face their own battles on homeland. The two brothers in arms form a friendship based on mutual respect for fighting for their country. But in a small and bigoted rural land the black man Ronsel is delegated to a boy and is segregated from the whites. The two ignore orders to stop mixing and there are terrible consequences. Both families’ lives are changed forever. “Sometimes it is necessary to do wrong, sometimes it is the only way to make things right.”There are sad and disturbing accounts of violence and racism but it needs to be said and said loudly to learn from past mistakes, we all are equal. It is a sad recall of a time past of racialism and war and how it can have devastating and lasting harm on people. It is a sad but beautiful portrayal of many characters points of view white and black, male and female. Each in their own voice tell their own tale. I highly recommend this tale. Reviewed by Annette Dunlea author of Always and Forever and The Honey Trap.
Book Trailer : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-S3AFk... ( )

Mudbound by Hillary Jordan was an exquisite piece of modern Southern literature. In her debut novel, Jordan crafted a story of family, race and farm life set in 1940’s Mississippi. Heart-wrenching, Mudbound will leave any reader stunned by the tragedy of the American South from not too long ago.

The book has several narrators: Laura, a Memphis belle who reluctantly moved to her husband’s farm; Henry, her husband who loved his farm more than anything; Hap, one of Henry’s tenants; and his wife Florence, a superstitious midwife who could smell trouble a mile away. Added to this mix were Jamey and Ronsel – veterans who came home with a restlessness that could not be resolved on the farm.

At the root of this story was the racial injustice prevalent in the 1940’s South. Hap, Florence and Ronsel experience racism every day of their lives– from deferring to their white neighbors to using the back door at the local store. Ronsel, after fighting for his country, could not readjust to the white-centric society. After discovering he fathered a child with a woman in Germany, Ronsel realized that the time to go was now.

However, the white people of this farming community had a different plan for Ronsel, who they found uppity and disrespectful. I don’t want to give away too much, but Ronsel’s ordeal was heart-breaking. He was a character I was rooting for, and I was disgusted with how he was treated by others.

Jordan’s characterization was spot-on. There were characters you loved, ones you felt sorry for and others you hated. It saddens me that racism is part of Southern history, but I believe it’s important to read stories, such as Mudbound, to remind ourselves about this struggle for equality. I highly recommend Mudbound to Southern book lovers everywhere. ( )

Too many stories. Started with interesting perspective on post-WWII generation of housewives and following husband’s dictates and dreams, but cluttered with (albeit interesting) issues of returning vets, racial trauma. ( )

A story of "rage and lust, of recklessness and selfishness and betrayal" in the Mississippi Delta of the 1940s. The book, which builds towards a climax which we know from the start is going to be tragic, describes the interlinked stories of two families - one being a dull but dependable farmer, his city-bred wife, his cantankerous father and flighty brother, and the other one of their tenant farmers - a black family whose son has just returned, highly decorated, from fighting in Europe. I bought this on the strength of the Barbara Kingsolver puff on its cover, and like The Poisonwood Bible one of its strengths was the sympathy it had for its characters - each one took turns in narrating, which helped the reader to understand the motivations of each one. I particularly liked the character of Florence, the clear-sighted, no-nonsense wife and mother of the tenant farmer family. The weakness of the book was that it didn't feel very original - each element of the story was familiar to me from any number of other books - and so it was a little predictable. ( )

It’s hard to say that I loved a book that deals with such tough subject matter as prejudice, hatred, and violence but when the author is so skilled in evoking emotion, you gotta love it.

When Laura McAllen’s husband Henry drops the bombshell on her that they are leaving her city home and all of her family behind and moving to the Mississippi Delta in a week, I was angry at his lack of consideration for her feelings and sympathetic to Laura and her difficulty in adapting. I’m not sure I could go from having a shower in my home to bathing once a week and then having it be such a chore that it is turned into something that must be done rather than an enjoyment.

The profiles of the racism and prejudice are difficult but they are moving. It’s a sad journey back into our past where these events took place but, as with other painful historical facts, it is necessary to revisit them to keep the memories alive so that the learning continues.

I was really drawn in by Mudbound, much more than I expected to be. I would recommend this to lovers of historical and/or southern fiction. There are also WWII elements to this story but they are played out to a lesser extent. ( )

http://www.bostonbibliophile.com/2009... ( )

Hackneyed plot? yes. Unidimensional Characters? yes. Simplistic? yes. Strangely Compelling despite all this? yes.

I really can't understand the excitement this book has generated as everything in the book seemed inevitable, it was humourless, and trite. But, I still liked it. ( )

I thought Mudbound was a beautifully written story of the South and its prejudices. While some of the content was horrifically graphic, it portrays the cruelty that humans can perpetrate on one another as a result of their social customs and beliefs. At the same time we get a sense of the isolation, hard work and rigorous living conditions of rural southern farmers. Also included in this book are the after effects of the horrors of war on a generation of young men that drew together two men in a way that could ultimately only produce even more awful, desperate actions.

As the reader will soon and easily learn, the book is not light and happy but the story is definitely one worth reading and the author has created an unforgettable set of characters and circumstances. ( )

Laura, a city woman whose life has always been free, and Ronsell, the son of a sharecropper who experienced freedom and respect in Europe during the second World War, find their lives completely changed when Laura's husband buys a farm in backwoods Mississippi. Riveting - CKL

We know the old man is dead. How it came about is surprising, and demands each player's point of view. Jordan shows Faulkner's understanding of the South and its people; she uses more rational style to share it with us.
The scene in a pickup cab -- a ride offered from town back out into the farms of the Delta -- with WWII veterans Jamie and Ronsel (a white man and a black man) tells us everything about the pain and possibilities of the US at midcentury. ( )

Mudbound is the story of two families, one white and one black, and the Delta farmland that both binds and separates them. Following the end of World War II, Henry McAllen moves his wife, his two small daughters, and his hateful father, from a comfortable life in Memphis to a hard and isolated life farming a tract of land in the Mississippi Delta. The farm had several tenant families when Henry purchased it, including the Jackson family. Both families are anxiously awaiting the return of loved ones from Europe. The McAllens wait for Henry's brother, Jamie, a decorated bomber pilot, and the Jacksons wait for son Ronsel, a sergeant in the 761st tanker battalion. Both Jamie and Ronsel eventually return, changed by their wartime experiences. Neither man realizes how little attitudes have changed in this small Southern town, and how their careless disregard of the rules of segregation plant the seed that eventually leads to tragedy for both families.

The author uses multiple narrators to tell parts of the story from their own perspectives, recounting the build-up of events that led to tragedy, so I knew from the beginning that it would not have a "happily ever after" ending. Even though I could see the flaws in each character, I developed a degree of sympathy for each one because I had been given a glimpse of the inner person -- except for Henry's father, Pappy, who is the only adult in either family who was not one of the story's narrators. I never felt any sympathy for him.

One aspect of the book continues to nag at me. The author several times contrasted the racism Ronsel endured among the rural and small town Mississippi whites with the acceptance he found among European women. I wasn't in England or Germany during World War II to see how African American soldiers were treated there. I was in England several decades later, though, and observed how Indian, Pakistani, and West Indian residents were treated by some of the white British citizens. The Jim Crow South did not have a monopoly on racist attitudes. Even though the German women in the novel were more accepting of Ronsel and other African American soldiers, one of the reasons the American G.I.s were in Germany was the persecution of Jews under the Hitler regime. Racism can flourish in any place in any era. Books like this one remind us of its evils and warn us against committing the same sins. ( )

Mudbound lives up to its descriptive name. It begins and ends at a muddy gravesite with intervening times of hardship and toil on a struggling cotton farm. It is post WWII in the Mississippi Delta. The land is harsh and the people are harsher.

Hatred and bigotry are major themes in this work that earned the Bellwether Prize for Ms. Jordan's first fiction account of social justice. Unfortunately, there was no real justice in this riveting book about racial tensions in the south, but I must say the final retribution of Pappy was both satisfying and necessary. The last three pages were more of an Afterword and are a well-deserved tribute to those who create dignity out of degradation and triumph out of tragedy. ( )

A short novel set somewhere in the southern USA during and after the second world war. A family stress saga that ends in a murder. The plot is full of tension and the mystery element is maintained to the end . Main motifs are racial prejudice, marital tension and bullying elders.
Well worth reading. ( )

Shortly after World War II, spinster Laura Chappell meets and marries Henry McAllan. She enjoys her life with Henry and their two daughters in Memphis until he buys a cotton farm in rural Mississippi. They end up living in little more than a shack on the farm, along with Henry's racist father and eventually, Henry's brother Jamie, a veteran of WWII. Florence and Hap Jackson are black tenant farmers on the McAllen farm and Florence helps Laura as her housekeeper. When Ronsel Jackson comes home from the war, he and Jamie begin to spend time together which sparks an outcry from the racist residents of the small southern community.

Jordan's debut novel is told from multiple perspectives in alternating chapters. She captures the spirit of this diificult and shameful time in American history. This is a difficult book to read, but almost impossible to put down. ( )

Excellent character development. Told from the perspective of six different individuals - 3 black, 3 white. An insightful look a the pressures people faced during 1939-1945. I couldn't turn the pages fast enough at the end to find out what happened. ( )