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Winner of the 2011 National Book Award for Fiction 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, while 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 comprise the novel's framework yield to the final day and Hurricane Katrina, the unforgettable family at the novel's heart—motherless children sacrificing for each other as they can, protecting and nurturing where love is scarce—pulls itself up to struggle for another day. A wrenching look at the lonesome, brutal, and restrictive realities of rural poverty, "Salvage the Bones" is muscled with poetry, revelatory, and real.
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My friend Caleb told me to read this. He said it would/should be entered into the portfolio of American classics. Given that preface, I started reading it thinking it would make me feel the same slight dread/apprehension that As I Lay Dying or Catcher in the Rye or Of Mice and Men or Their eyes were watching god or something made me feel in high school. I've read too many books placed in the south, with dogs, with barns, and with bad things happening in all these places!! Ugh Lenny. Jewel.
So I was slightly hanging in suspense, expecting very bad things to happen. And...well it ends up not being that book. It centers on a black family in Mississipi before and slightly after Hurricane Katrina hits. With very good writing, the author introduces characters into the hot sticky heat and has them do pretty normal things day to day. The way the narrator observes her brothers and their friends and the way she relates them to herself and to nature is pretty stunning in an non obvious way. Something that also stood out is the fixture of LOVE in the family. No one outright says they love their dad or their brother or sister, but the quiet loyalty and concern that each of them has toward the other is really touching. That's probably something that was missing from a lot of the other classics I read in high school. Those authors were so focused on building metaphors that they forgot to make their families love each other, like normal families do.
As a result, five stars!!
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