What do readers think of Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward? Write your own review.

This is a book that broke my heart many times over. It shocked me. It was an emotional sucker punch. And it is a literary masterpiece.

Written by Jesmyn Ward, this is the story of the Batistes, a poor Black family living in a rundown house on rundown land peppered with rundown junk in the rural Mississippi coastal town of Bois Sauvage as Hurricane Katrina looms at sea, taking direct aim on them. And while that hurricane is churning in the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, an emotional hurricane is churning in the lives of this family.

Each of the 12 chapters covers a single day, leading up to Katrina's landfall on day 11 of the book. The novel is written in the first-person voice of Esch, a 15-year-old girl who thinks she does only two things well: She can run really fast, and she enjoys having sex. And while Esch has allowed several of her older brothers' friends to have sex with her since she was 12, she has fallen in love with Manny, who is 19. Now only he is allowed to touch her. But Manny is cruelly using her, which becomes a real problem since Esch is pregnant with Manny's baby. She has no one to tell and no one to help her. Meanwhile, her older brother Skeetah, who has groomed his pit bull, China, as a prize-winning fighter, is doting on the dog as she has her first litter of puppies. Randall has thoughts only for basketball, while the littlest one, Junior, follows Esch and Randall everywhere. Their mother died in childbirth with Junior, and their father is an alcoholic who is obsessed with the coming hurricane. And then that hurricane blasts its wrath over the vulnerable land.

"Bois Sauvage" is a fictional town, meaning "wild wood" in French. It is indeed wild and almost savage. But the love and care that family and friends offer each other is what tames those wild woods where white neighbors shoot at them and the pit bulls viciously tear each other apart for their owners' financial benefit. It's not an easy life, and the characters grab at happiness wherever they can find it, be in a bottle of booze, sex, basketball, or a dog.

Masterfully written in prose that is so lyrical and expressive it is almost poetic, this novel is destined to become a classic read in English classes a century from now. It is a literary gift. The book has everything: a gripping, wrenching plot, authentic characters, the powerful symbolism of the intensity of mother love juxtaposed with brutal, bloody violence, and imagery so vivid you will feel the oppressive heat, the howling wind, and the sting of red ants. Also, it should win an award for the best similes; some were so beautiful they almost made me weep.

Perhaps the most brilliant part of the novel is how Ward has interwoven the ancient Greek myth of "The Golden Fleece" throughout the story. In this myth, Medea killed her two children by her husband Jason for revenge after he was unfaithful. Esch, who is reading Edith Hamilton's book "Mythology" for her summer assigned reading, identifies with Medea as she slowly accepts the fact of her pregnancy and shakes off the cloak of apathy.

Most of all, this is just a really, really good story about the brutal struggle for survival—one that grabbed my heart and wouldn't let go.

Read it while you can! This is one of the dozens of books the state of Texas wants to ban. The specific reason cited for "Salvage the Bones" is the explicit descriptions of 15-year-old Esch having sex. Meanwhile, those defending the book insist it has important literary value and therefore is not obscene.

The book is written by a Stanford graduate whose narrator is a 14-year old black girl from a poverty stricken background. Though the character uses poor grammar upon occasion her vocabulary is that of a Stanford graduate. Her comparison to Medea is pretentious and does nothing to alleviate the general unpleasantness of the novel, which is never alleviated by humor or lightness of any kind. The descriptions are well done and unlikely from our protagonist. It is supposedly about surviving Katrina which has very little effect on the family. They suddenly manage to get to an unaffected neighborhood with people who will care for them, and Esch is even told by Big Henry that he will take care of her. It is almost fairy tale like ending to a dreadful story. There is no pleasure in reading this book.

This book is in no way worthy of a National Book Award. In these times of "Oprah" rated best sellers, it just doesn't meet the cut! I didn't like the book!

On one hand it is was hard to read about a poor Mississippi family, and on the other hand, the story turned out to be a moving portrayal of survival. It was often hard to read due to the hard edges of very difficult realities as seen through the eyes of children. I would recommend this book with reservation.

The title “Salvage the Bones” was intriguing to me, but I do not understand the connection of the title with the narrative. Although there were many things needing rescue or salvaging, none of these things made me think of bones. I also had difficulty connecting the dog fights with the rest of the story. I did like the various themes on motherhood as seen in the mother dog, Esch’s mother who had died, and how Esch would have to come to terms with her own unexpected pregnancy.
The author captured the voice of a fourteen year old girl well in that most 14 year olds know how pregnancy occurs but think that it will not happen to them. She also brings in a common theme of an adolescent girl making poor choices about which boy she will pursue and mistaking sex for love. The narrator comparing her own life to the story of Medea may have been a stretch, but may be believable from a histrionic fourteen year old’s point of view. The name of the homestead “the Pit” was confusing especially when used in the same sentence as the pit bull dogs. This book gets good at the climax during the action of the flooding but then just fizzles out. The only resolution is that Esch does see that her quest for love, like Medea’s, was not going to turn out quite the way she would have scripted it.

Salvage the Bones is not a happy tale. The story centers around a poor family in rural Mississippi, struggling after the death of the matriarch leaves them without direction. The siblings seem to live separate lives, but come together when needed. When life goes from bad to worse, the best comes out.

This is so well written that I even got through most of the dog fight. Narrated by a young girl, Esch, who describes her daily life in a swamp in Louisiana as Katrina comes closer and finally bears down on the poorest of the poor, it is a heartbreaking story but one that also shows the inner strength of our forgotten neighbors. Comparing herself to Medea in the way her own life unfolds, Esch lives out the treachery of living in poverty and the choices that are made. Metaphor, simile, and the gloriously descriptive use of language lead me to believe Jesmyn Ward will be telling stories for a long time.

Wow. This book put me right there watching the run-up and aftermath of Katrina. It is so eye-opening and yet I feel like there is hope for us all because of these brave characters. Great read.