But no journey for a woman like Leonie through this state is without danger, and many things go wrong, sometimes dramatically. She quickly gathers her kids, recruits a friend for the ride, and embarks on the journey north to the Delta to collect Michael at Parchman Farm, the Mississippi State Penitentiary. Their lives are further complicated when Leonie gets the call from the white father of her children that he's up for parole. Told in Ward's rich, lyrical language, this majestic novel is impossible to ignore.įor Pop and Mam, their daughter Leonie, and her kids Jojo and Kayla, life is hard: Mam has cancer, Pop is preoccupied by working their small parcel of land, Leonie has a meth problem, and Jojo and Kayla seek love from their grandparents rather than their absent mother. Confronting the realities of life in the rural South, Ward gives us an epochal story, a road novel through Mississippi's past and present that explores the bonds of family as tested by racism and poverty. In Jesmyn Wards's first novel since her National Book Award-winner, Salvage the Bones, she returns to Mississippi and the grand themes of her earlier work. The searing and profound odyssey of a Southern family-by National Book Award-winner Jesmyn Ward.
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