Salvage the Bones
A Novel
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3.8 • 228 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the National Book Award
Jesmyn Ward, two-time National Book Award winner and author of Sing, Unburied, Sing, delivers a gritty but tender novel about family and poverty in the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina.
A hurricane is building over the Gulf of Mexico, threatening the coastal town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, and Esch's father is growing concerned. A hard drinker, largely absent, he doesn't show concern for much else. Esch and her three brothers are stocking food, but there isn't much to save. Lately, Esch can't keep down what food she gets; she's fourteen and pregnant. Her brother Skeetah is sneaking scraps for his prized pitbull's new litter, dying one by one in the dirt. Meanwhile, brothers Randall and Junior try to stake their claim in a family long on child's play and short on parenting.
As 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. 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.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
As this National Book Award winner opens, Hurricane Katrina is mere days away, and we see the inevitable chaos through the eyes of a poor Black family living in a small Mississippi bayou town. Teenage Esch quietly reads Greek mythology as she copes with the violent nausea of early pregnancy and the sad knowledge that the baby’s father doesn’t care for her or the coming child in the same way she so powerfully does for him. Her brother Randall focuses on his basketball dreams, her brother Skeetah devotes himself to his fighting pit bull, China, and her new puppies, and their younger brother Junior pokes around in the dirt underneath their crumbling home. Meanwhile, their alcoholic father ineffectually attempts to direct their preparation for the coming storm. Jesmyn Ward endured Katrina herself, and she poetically and viscerally expresses this family’s emotionally complex landscape, even as the physical landscape gears up to roll over them. After experiencing this gorgeously written storm of a book, Katrina will feel personal to you in a way that it may never have before.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Ward's poetic second novel (after Where the Line Bleeds) covers the 12 days leading up to Hurricane Katrina via the rich, mournful voice of Esch Batiste, a pregnant 14-year-old black girl living with her three brothers and father in dire poverty on the edge of Bois Sauvage, Miss. Stricken with morning sickness and dogged by hunger, Esch helps her drunken father prepare their home for the gathering storm. She also looks after seven-year-old Junior while her oldest brother, Randall, trains to win a scholarship to basketball camp, and middle son Skeet devotes himself to delivering and raising his fighting bitch China's pit bull puppies. All the while, Esch ponders whether she will have the baby and yearns for its father to love her "once he learns secret." Esch traces in the minutiae of every moment of every scene of her life the thin lines between passion and violence, love and hate, life and death, and though her voice threatens to overpower the story, it does a far greater service to the book by giving its cast of small lives a huge resonance.
Customer Reviews
Bravo, Jesmyn!
Jesmyn Ward did a phenomenal job telling a story that felt both literally and emotionally close to home. I really appreciated how she captured the everyday rhythm of this rural Mississippi family as they prepared for what they assumed would be another typical hurricane — not knowing Katrina would change everything. The slow build, with each chapter marking a new day leading up to the storm, made the unfolding tension hit even harder.
Esch’s journey, especially, pulled at me. She’s 14, in love with Manny — who’s ashamed of her, has a girlfriend, and got her pregnant. Watching her navigate this secret, carrying both shame and longing, while still trying to just be a teenage girl, was heartbreaking. Her pregnancy becomes this heavy thing she’s holding onto alone, and Ward doesn’t sugarcoat that. She shows the isolation, the confusion, and the aching hope for love, all wrapped into Esch’s inner world.
And then there’s Skeetah and China — their bond was one of the most powerful depictions of loyalty and love in the book. Even though dog fighting is undeniably violent and hard to witness, Ward finds a way to show the deep emotional terrain underneath it. Skeetah’s devotion to China, his belief in her strength and his care through her pregnancy and birth, mirrors the love and survival themes threaded throughout the whole story. In a way, Skeetah is trying to salvage what’s left — just like everyone else.
Each sibling’s dynamic added something to the portrait of this family. Junior clings to Randall like a shadow, idolizing him. Randall takes on the big brother role with care and intention. And Daddy — broken, grieving, and still trying to hold everything together — really moved me. The loss of their home wasn’t just material; it was spiritual, emotional, ancestral. It represented the last physical piece of the life he had with their mother. And now that’s gone too — along with his ring finger. That detail alone… it just says so much.
The ending left me with a lot of questions: What happens to Esch and the baby? Will she find peace or partnership with Big Henry? Will China return? Can Daddy grieve and rebuild? Will the family ever feel safe or whole again? Ward doesn’t give us all the answers, but she gives us enough — enough to sit with, to feel, and to imagine.
And honestly, that’s the Black woman magic that is Jesmyn Ward. Her storytelling is rich, layered, and unapologetically emotional. She captures survival in its rawest form and still leaves room for beauty, for tenderness, and for hope. Salvage the Bones is a stunning work, and I can’t wait to read more by her.
Pure poetry,pure brillance
Great writing, great story, great author. This book will be one I reflect on for many years. Jesmyn Ward is a national treasure.
Amazing read!!
Highly recommend this book. It was intense. It was passionate. It’s full of love and sacrifice and a story I’ll never forget, especially as someone from Louisiana.