Salvage the Bones

For many of us who did not have the misfortune to live through Hurricane Katrina on a first-hand basis, the most indelible images of that disaster are of the havoc and heartbreak wrought on the city of New Orleans. In Salvage the Bones, however, author Jesmyn Ward reminds us that the scope of the tragedy was considerably wider. Set along the Mississippi gulf coast in the twelve days leading up to when Katrina made landfall, the novel relates the heart-wrenching plight of the Batiste clan, a dirt-poor African American family whose matriarch has died leaving the four children to mostly fend for themselves despite the presence of their still-grieving father.

As told in the first-person by Esch, fifteen years old and the only daughter, the show more story revolves around the preparations the family is forced to make while still trying to sort out the tribulations of their everyday lives. Their journey is rocky and grim, to say the least. Along the way, the reader is confronted with such dark realities as alcoholism, teen pregnancy, petty theft and vandalism, drug use, dog fighting for sport, physical disfigurement, death in child birth, and personal betrayal. And all of that happens before the storm even hits!

Salvage the Bones is highly atmospheric and contains some of the strongest images and most powerful writing that I have come across in quite some time. Ward has done a wonderful job of developing her protagonists—particularly the four Batiste children—into fully realized characters. Also, the main themes she explores—the tyranny of unrelenting poverty, the poignancy of unrequited love, loyalty to family and friends, the power of nature, dismissive attitudes toward women—felt real and were all deeply affecting. On the other hand, the novel seemed to be a little overwritten at times; Esch’s preoccupation with the Greek myth of Medea and Jason was both repetitive and a bit of a false note. Still, that is a small complaint and hardly one that detracts from what was ultimately a satisfying reading experience. show less

Bloody hell. This is a tough, tough book to read - a poor black family in rural Louisiana somewhere scraping lives together in the shadow of the looming Hurricane Katrina. The writing is stunning - building dread and sadness throughout, bringing out the tough bonds forged between siblings and completely occupying the voice of Eche, the 14 year old narrator. Like the storm itself, Salvage the Bones builds and builds, slowly upping the tension, before exploding into a finale as ragged, breathless and overwhelming as the hurricane.

A great book, but not one I'm not likely to read again soon. "Salvage the Bones" is, from its very beginning, an almost unbearably intense reading experience. Forget the hurricane, which finally makes its appearance in the book's final third. From the very moment we meet Esch, her life is defined by generational poverty, geographic and isolation, bad luck and, thankfully, intense love for attachment to her family. "Too much, too soon" is a cliché, but I've seldom seen it expressed in prose better -- or more poignantly -- than Ward expresses it here. In her mid-teens, we see Esch balance the roles of sister, substitute mother, provider and student. I suppose it isn't particularly surprising, then, that things fall apart by the end of show more the novel, though the weather event that will not be named here makes things more dramatic than they otherwise might have been.

Ward's writing fits this material almost too well, treading the line between exhilarating and exhausting. It'd be difficult to argue that Esch's teenage experience is typical, at least by the standards of widely read American literature. But the author's style deftly recalls a time in which even the most insignificant events can have enormous, both emotional and otherwise. Esch's life -- and the life of all her family -- is constantly teetering on the edge, and the book's prose, which is suffused with deep feeling, sensuality, desire, fear, and memory, reflects that well. Not that this makes "Salvage the Bones" an easy read. From a certain, perhaps shallow perspective, Esch's life seems so exhausting that it's difficult for even the reader to get through its particulars. The world that "Salvage the Bones" describes often gives the impression of being disordered and borderless: everything -- nature and late capitalism, brutality and affection, hard-fought life and luckless death -- comes together in ways that are sometimes surprising and other times sadly fated. The book itself seems set in a place between past and present that's difficult to pin down: its characters live in a verdant, swampy forest that seems as old as time itself, but car speakers are discussed and Outkast earns a mention. There's sex, but not a lot of love. There are opportunities to make money and dreams of glory about, but nothing set and stone, and lots of it heartbreakingly contingent. This isn't a book to read casually. It demands your attention and fairly overwhelms your senses. I had to force myself to get through it, and I wouldn't be surprised if lots of readers simply don't make it to the last page.

Still, there were some things about "Salvage the Bones" that pleasantly surprised me. Refreshingly, Ward does not seem to be interested in having a conversation with William Faulkner, as Toni Morrison often did. This novel's main preoccupation is often the natural word, something else that Katrina also had a hand in damaging. Esch is at home in the forest, and is comfortable around many of its animal and vegetable inhabitants, and not in the way that MFA-earning poets are. There were times I felt that I was back in "As I Lay Dying" getting stuck in the Mississippi mud on yet another unbearably hot day, but this feeling proved to be fleeting. I loved Ward's descriptions of Big Henry, one of the few teenage characters here -- besides Esch -- who seems older and calmer than his years. And the family's love for Junior, their youngest son, and the care they take of him, is genuinely touching.

Ward also introduces some material from some unexpected sources: While Edith Hamilton's "Mythology" and the story of Medea is frequently mentioned, I couldn't help hearing Edenic overtones throughout "Salvage the Bones" as well. That Hamilton's retelling of Medea's experience might strike some readers as both improbable and a touch precious. There don't seem to be any other books in Esch's house. But I think that the sheer emotional force that "Salvage the Bones" imparts -- and its essentially tragic structure -- more than justifies it. But, in a sense, that represents one of this novel's problems, too. You could -- and many will -- read "Salvage the Bones" as a tragedy in the truest cosmic sense. You can't escape the notion that Esch and her relations are doomed from the very first page, and this doesn't make for a joyful reading experience. Many will call it too dark, too sad, and just too much, and they might not be wrong. It doesn't help, I suppose, that dogfighting is one of this book's major plot points. I'm hardly a dog person under the best of conditions, but I found having to read about the birth, training, and fighting of truly fierce pitbulls to be almost more than I could take. Like many other elements in "Salvage the Bones", they are fierce, bloody, undeniably strong, and, however improbably, the object of one of this novel's characters boundless affections. Uf, it's too much. It's antipodean summertime right now, and I'm off to read something a little lighter. I'll get to "Sing, Unburied, Sing" eventually. Whatever problems I may have had with it, "Salvage the Bones" is so good that Ward's work can't just be written off as Southern misery porn. She's a real-deal writer. show less

"Seeing him broke the cocoon of my rib cage, and my heart unfurled to fly." (page 4-5)

I had originally rated this 4.5 stars because there were a few flaws in it, but going back and re-reading parts and knowing how much I loved this story, it just felt wrong not to give it a full 5. I connected with it on a level I had not expected and was so very moved by it. What is more deserving of five stars than a book like that?

Searing. Brutal. Stunning. Heartbreaking. Beautiful. Powerful. Painful. Hopeful. I could just string some adjectives together and be done with it, but this book deserves so much more. And I won't do it justice. I will say that putting aside the particular circumstances and specifics of the story - poverty, race, Katrina, show more dog fighting, neglect and all sorts of other horrors - this book is about family. How we hold it together, depend on it, make it up as we go, and create ones where none exist. All you really need to know is that 15 year old Esch is motherless and pregnant. Those two facts are the bookends of the story - everything else happens within that context. Motherhood can be both beautiful and brutal. Esch has warm memories of her own mother who died when she was eight; now she is pregnant and her only model of what a mother is comes from her brother's fighting pit bull who just birthed a litter of puppies. We want so badly for something good to happen for Esch but she is repeatedly beaten down by both the cruelty of her circumstances and the cruelty of the father of her baby. And then the hurricane comes...

Please read this book.

"When she died, Mama told me that she had gone away, and then I wondered where she went. Because everyone else was crying, I clung like a monkey to Mama, my legs and arms wrapped around her softness, and I cried, love running through me like a hard, blinding summer rain. And then Mama died, and there was no one left for me to hold on to." (page 59) show less

This is absorbing. Ward writes about a rural Mississippi family’s life leading up to Katrina’s arrival in 2005. But Katrina is not really the major event of the story — in fact, most of the book is the story of their lives before Katrina hits.

Esch, a teenaged young woman, tells the story. She and her brothers, Skeetah, Randall, and Junior, live with their father in deep southern Mississippi. Their lives are pretty much make-do. Skeetah’s dog China is everything to him — he loves her like people love their dogs, but she’s also his fighting dog, a meal ticket. Randall is a basketball prospect, by Esch’s description someone who comes alive and only becomes himself with a basketball in his hands. Junior is just starting out, show more born well after his brothers and sister, and destined to follow hard footsteps. Esch’s father is on the edge of broken, his wife having died in Junior’s childbirth and life just a hard crawl every day.

The turns of Esch’s life take on significance through her reading and seeing herself through the mirror of the story of Medea and Jason (she is reading Edith Hamilton’s Mythology). There’s a justice in her seeing herself through that mirror of Greek myth — the heroes (and anti-heroes) of mythology are great not so much because they are heroes but because they are human, staking out the timeless themes and tensions of human lives. And Esch elevates her own life through the lens of Medea and Jason.

Ward has the rare ability to make you feel as if you are actually inside the story. When Katrina hit, I felt the rain and wind. I felt the oppressive confines of Esch’s, Skeetah’s, Junior’s, Randall’s, and their father’s lives. I felt the gleam of light that Randall got from basketball, Skeetah from China, and Esch from her romantic daydreams.

Seeing characters from the inside this way makes them sympathetic no matter their faults, and there are plenty to go around here. It works in real life, too. This is how you get past appearances.

If we are going to understand Katrina, and, if we are going to understand anything about what it is to be poor, rural, and black in southern Mississippi, we need writers like Ward. This is the kind of stuff that makes you bigger. show less

This book made me rethink almost everything I thought I knew about every topic it touches; poverty, Katrina, even dog-fighting. An important, beautiful book. Hard to read in places, probably even harder to write. These characters will stay with me for a long long time.

Well written, sometimes moving account of a poor black family's daily struggles 12 days before and directly after Hurricane Katrina. The story is told through a 12 year old girl, who has just learned that she is pregnant. I have read few novels recently that do a better job of getting you into the experience of being poor and black in the deep south. In this sense,it feels like a classic--a book that may be assigned some day to high school students as mandatory reading. Which may be my biggest criticism too--feels like a book that should be read to make you a better person. Nonetheless, this book will make it totally clear just how difficult it is to stage an effective response to a disaster like Katrina and why aiming such aid at the show more wealthy or even the middle class will be totally and utterly ineffective. This is a very talented young new voice. show less