Salvage the Bones (2011) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

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Characters/People edit see section history

• Esch: Main character. Only daughter in the family.
• Randall Grips Junior: Youngest son. Mother died when he was born.
• Skeeter: Second oldest brother. Raises pit bulls.
• China: Skeeter's prize winning pit bull.
• Randall: Oldest son in the family. Plays basketball.
• Daddy: Single father. Alcoholic.
• Manny: Neighborhood boy. Friends with Randall.
• Big Henry: Big Henry is a friend to the family and owns a car.
• Javon: A young man, friend of the family.
• Nella: Add a description of this character.
• Marquise: A young man, friend of the family.
• Shaliyah
• Jerome
• Rico
• Tilda
• Mudda: An old lady in the neighborhood
• Boss
• Mother Lizbeth: Grandmother of Esch and her brothers.
• Papa Joseph: Grandfather of Esch and her brothers.
• Franco
• Claude Adam Batiste: Same as Daddy.
• Skeetah: Another spelling of Skeeter
• Lala: A rival pit bull.
• St. Catherine
• Mama

Quotes edit see section history

• “Seeing him broke the cocoon of my rib cage, and my heart unfurled to fly.”

  Esch

• “Randall's hands look graceless without a basketball in them. He looks like he doesn't know how to hold them.”

• “The wind moves a little in the tops of the trees, and then dies away, like a person leaving a room. The trees are silent with longing.”

• “Skeetah slices at the stomach, and what comes sliding out is blue and purple, like so much wet yarn.”

• “I cup my stomach, hear Daddy say something he only says in his sober moments: What's done in the dark always comes to the light.”

  Esch

• “The sun had set while Skeetah and I were looking for wood for the grill; the sky burst to color above us, and then the sun sank through the trees so that the color ran out of the sky line like water out of a drain and left the sky bleached white to navy to dark.”

  Esch

• “I've heard girls at my school talk. These are conversations I snatch from the air like we take down clothes that have crusted dry on a clothesline.”

  Esch

• “I imagine that he told her that he loved her, soaked tender with moonshine.”

  Esch

• “She is calm and self-possessed as a housecat; it is the way that all girls who only know one boy move. Centered as if the love that boy feels for them anchors them deep as a tree's roots, holds them still as the oaks, which don't uproot in hurricane wind. Love as certainty.”

• “Big Henry asks the air in front of him, but everyone knows who he is speaking to.”

• “China is white as the sand that will become a pearl, Skeetah black as an oyster, but they stand as one before these boys who do not know what it means to love a dog the way that Skeetah does.”

Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Gulf of Mexico
• St. Catherine
• Bois Sauvage, Mississippi
• Florida
• Ivomec
• Mississippi

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Jesmyn Ward (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• National Book Award (2011: Fiction)
• Alex Awards (2012)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: PS3623.A7323 S36 2011
• Dewey: 813.6

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › Literary

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

• New York Times Book Review: Job has nothing on 15-year-old Esch. She’s poor and pregnant and plain unlucky. Mama’s dead, Daddy’s a drunk and dinner is Top Ramen every night. Sex is the only thing that has ever come easily to her. When the boys used to take her down in the dirt or in the back seats of stripped cars in her front yard, she could escape briefly, pretend to be Psyche, Eurydice, Daphne, her favorite nymphs and goddesses from the Greek myths. But Manny, the boy who put the baby inside her, won’t look at her anymore. Esch can’t lie down in the dirt and pretend to be someone else or anywhere else. She’s stuck in shabby Bois Sauvage, a predominantly black Mississippi bayou town in the direct path of a hurricane they’re calling Katrina.