WARD: I thought that the subject matter was too gritty and I thought that the people that I write about and the place that I write about, you know, where they come from. Because of the subject matter? Do you think that the subject matter, you thought, was just too gritty?

MARTIN: But did you think that you were a - God, I hate the term 'dark horse,' but I'll use it just for now. I'm very hesitant to assume that good things are going to come to me, so beforehand, I kept preparing myself for losing, you know, and I thought, well, I will prepare myself to be happy for whoever wins and clap. You know, I just did not think that I was going to win. You were so surprised that you almost couldn't talk. MARTIN: What about the award? I'm told that you were very surprised. Welcome, and congratulations on this really significant honor. 'Salvage the Bones' recently won the National Book Award for fiction and Jesmyn Ward joins us now.

It's all seen through the eyes of the 15-year-old narrator named Esch. Extreme poverty, sexual abuse, routine violence and survival. In her novel, 'Salvage the Bones,' Jesmyn Ward tells the story of how one family on the Mississippi Gulf Coast endured Hurricane Katrina.īut it also tells the story of what they were enduring before the storm. 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.Sometimes, the stories of life's biggest triumphs and tragedies are best told, not in the headlines or in a cable news crawl, but in literature. Meanwhile, brothers Randall and Junior try to stake their claim in a family long on child’s play and short on parenting.Īs 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. Her brother Skeetah is sneaking scraps for his prized pitbull’s new litter, dying one by one in the dirt. Lately, Esch can’t keep down what food she gets she’s fourteen and pregnant. Esch and her three brothers are stocking food, but there isn’t much to save. A hard drinker, largely absent, he doesnt show concern for much else. A hurricane is building over the Gulf of Mexico, threatening the coastal town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, and Esch’s father is growing concerned.

Salvage of bones