Salvage the Bones
They heard it on the radio. A hurricane is coming, threatening the town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi. Esch's hard-drinking father can feel it in his bones. Esch and her brothers are trying to help prepare, but there are other worries too. Skeetah is watching his prized pit bull, helpless as her new litter dies one by one. Randall, when not preoccupied with basketball, is busy looking after the youngest, Junior. And Esch, fifteen and motherless among men, has just realized that she's pregnant. The children of this family have always been short of nurture, but they are fiercely loyal to one another. It is together that they will face building storm- and the day that will dawn after.
Themes & atmosphere
Also by Jesmyn Ward
All works by Jesmyn Ward →
What you might want to know about Salvage the Bones
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Esch is fifteen, motherless, and quietly pregnant. As Hurricane Katrina builds offshore, she, her three brothers, and a fighting pit bull named China prepare a bare yard in rural Mississippi for the storm.
Yes. Salvage the Bones won the 2011 National Book Award for Fiction. Jesmyn Ward later won a second National Book Award in 2017 for Sing, Unburied, Sing, becoming the first woman to win the prize twice.
Salvage the Bones is fictional but set against the real arrival of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Jesmyn Ward grew up in coastal Mississippi and drew on her own family's experience of the storm.
Salvage the Bones was written by Jesmyn Ward, published in 2011 by Belfond.
Salvage the Bones is 275 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Salvage the Bones takes most readers 4 to 6 hours to finish.
Salvage the Bones is a standalone novel by Jesmyn Ward, not part of a series.
Salvage the Bones is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.