In Review: Salvage the Bones

Ward Portrays the Bittersweet Reality of Growing up in Today’s Poor American South

In Salvage the Bones, Jesmyn Ward creates such real characters that you feel like you are standing next to them and experiencing life with them. Her representation of adolescents growing up in a single-parent household that is anything but what mainstream, western media represents as normal, provides a provocative, poignant view of humanity. The novel approaches reality not from a social-ills perspective, but one in which the landscape of a young woman, desperately seeking clarity about the journey of being human is created like a colorful map of words. Ward’s main character, fourteen year old Esch is facing not only the fact that she is pregnant, but that the boy she loves can’t or won’t love her in return. She struggles to make sense of all of this in the anticipation of Hurricane Katrina. Her alcoholic father proves to be less than a strong leader in the trying days of preparation for the storm. Esch also lives a simultaneous reality with her three brothers, finding herself through their experiences as much as she does through her own. Through the eyes of her younger brother, she maintains innocence, while her oldest brother’s dreams of basketball give her hope. Finally, the relationship that her middle brother has with his beloved pit bull, who has just bore puppies, teaches Esch about love.

Much like her characters, Ward breathes three-dimensionality into the south throughout the story, the heat of its culture, making it come to life. Salvage the Bones is a beautiful novel that transports you not only to a place on the map, but a place in the heart.

~ Peace and Love, Tracey

© Tracey Love, 2015. All rights reserved.