Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward

This is what it means to be 15 and motherless and pregnant and poor in Coastal Mississippi just as Hurricane Katrina is headed your way. Yet from this comes a story, not of despair, but of the fierce saving power of family love, written in a voice both poetic and extravagant, giving it almost the quality of myth. This is, in short, a savage and beautiful novel.

The protagonist, Esch, is the only girl in a family consisting of her father, who sometimes drinks to excess and becomes violent; an older brother, who hopes to make his way out of poverty through basketball; a just-younger brother, who seems to give most of his love to his prize pit bull; and a much younger brother, who has been cared for and reared mostly by his siblings. The story all takes place in 11 days, leading up to, through, and just after Hurricane Katrina.

Sometimes the narrative is hard-to-take, such as the scenes of a dogfight. Sometimes it is heartbreaking, such as when Esch realizes that the father of her coming baby cares nothing for her. Sometimes it is breath-taking, such as the scenes of the escape from the storm. Sometimes it is even a little over-the-top in its use of similes and metaphors, however poetic they may be. But always it is present and immediate and powerful, particularly in depictions of the surroundings and of the oppressive weather.

This is a writer who knows the South intimately, and this book reminds me very much of William Faulkner, particularly of his novel As I Lay Dying. It has something of the same feel of language and of the mythic quality of the narrative.

I highly recommend this novel. It won the National Book Award in 2011.