Salvage the Bones: A Novel

National Book Award Winner
A Great American Atlantic Novel of the Last 100 Years

A tense, cunning novel, intelligently plotted and voluptuously written... Jesmyn Ward makes beautiful music, skillfully playing with her reader's expectations." Parul Sehgal, New York Times

The National Book Award-winning novel from the author of Let Us Descend and Men We Reaped—a gritty but tender story of family and poverty in the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina.

A hurricane is building on the Gulf of Mexico, threatening the coastal town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, and Esch's father is growing increasingly worried. A hard drinker, largely absent, he doesn't worry about much else. Esch and her three brothers are hoarding food, but there isn't much to save. Lately, Esch can't keep down the food she receives; she's fourteen and pregnant. Her brother Skeetah is sneaking scraps for his pit bull's new litter, dying one by one in the dirt. Meanwhile, brothers Randall and Junior are trying to stake their claim in a family long on child's play and short on parenting.

As the twelve days that comprise the novel's framework yield to their dramatic conclusion, this unforgettable family—the motherless children sacrificing for one another as best they can, protecting and nurturing where love is scarce—rises to face another day. A big-hearted novel about familial love and community against all odds, and a heartbreaking look at the lonely, brutal, and restrictive realities of rural poverty, Salvage the Bones is muscular with poetry, revelation, and reality.