Sing, Unburied, Sing

By Jesmyn Ward

Subjects: Suspense fiction, FICTION / African American / General, New york times reviewed, African americans, fiction, Racially mixed children, General, Large type books, FICTION / Literary, New York Times bestseller, Grandparents as parents, African American, FICTION, Literary, Fiction, family life, African American families, FICTION / Coming of Age, New York Times reviewed, Fiction, Fiction / literary, African american families, Nyt:hardcover-fiction=2017-10-15, New york times bestseller, Drug addicts, Fiction / african american / general, nyt:hardcover-fiction=2017-10-15, Coming of Age, Fiction / coming of age, Mississippi, fiction, Children of drug addicts, Book club selection

Description: **A SEARING AND PROFOUND SOUTHERN ODYSSEY BY NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER JESMYN WARD** In Jesmyn Ward's first novel since her National Book Award-winning *Salvage the Bones*, this singular American writer brings the archetypal road novel into rural twenty-first-century America. Drawing on Morrison and Faulkner, *The Odyssey* and the Old Testament, Ward gives us an epochal story, a journey through Mississippi's past and present that is both an intimate portrait of a family and an epic tale of hope and struggle. Ward is a major American writer, multiply awarded and universally lauded, and in *Sing, Unburied, Sing* she is at the height of her powers. Jojo and his toddler sister, Kayla, live with their grandparents, Mam and Pop, and the occasional presence of their drug-addicted mother, Leonie, on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. Leonie is simultaneously tormented and comforted by visions of her dead brother, which only come to her when she's high; Mam is dying of cancer; and quiet, steady Pop tries to run the household and teach Jojo how to be a man. When the white father of Leonie's children is released from prison, she packs her kids and a friend into her car and sets out for Parchman Farm, the Mississippi State Penitentiary, on a journey rife with danger and promise. *Sing, Unburied, Sing* grapples with the truths at the heart of the American story and the power and limitations of the bonds of family. Rich with Ward's distinctive, musical language, *Sing, Unburied, Sing* is a majestic new work and an essential contribution to American literature. This description comes from the 2017 Scribner edition.