Sing, Unburied, Sing

In her first book since receiving the National Book Award, Jesmyn Ward is a unique American author who sets the classic road novel in rural twenty-first-century America. Ward provides us with an epochal narrative, a voyage through Mississippi's history and present that is both an intimate family portrait and an epic tale of hope and struggle, drawing on Morrison and Faulkner, The Odyssey, and the Old Testament. Major American author Ward is well praised, has won several awards, and is at the pinnacle of her career with Sing, Unburied, Sing.

On a farm on Mississippi's Gulf Coast, Jojo and his younger sister Kayla live with their grandparents, Mam and Pop, and their drug-addicted mother, Leonie, who visits them sometimes. Though Mam is dying of cancer, Leonie is equally soothed and tortured by images of her deceased brother, which only appear to her when she is high; calm, steady Pop attempts to manage the family and educate Jojo how to be a man. After Leonie's children's white father is allowed to leave jail, she drives her kids and a friend to Parchman Farm, the Mississippi State Penitentiary, a trip that is both dangerous and exciting.

Sing, buried alive Sing examines the boundaries and strength of familial ties as well as the grim realities at the core of the American narrative. A magnificent new book and a crucial addition to American literature, Sing, Unburied, Sing is filled with Ward's particular, melodic language.