Monday, November 02, 2020

 


During the last weeks of hurricane season, I inadvertently read this engaging novel, Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward,  about a family of teenagers in Louisiana in 2005 who themselves are in the path of what will become Hurricane Katrina. The primary spokesperson for the family, to the reader at least, is the only girl in the family, Esch, a 14- or 15-year-old, who along with her siblings struggles with ethical and moral decisions ranging from dog fighting to stealing to learning that she's pregnant to dealing with an alcohol-impaired widowed father to keeping afloat in school to figuring out whom to trust and love.  The title of the book has more to do with surviving than dog fighting. Her brothers individually deal with trying to keep an opportunity for an athletic scholarship alive, breeding and fighting and cherishing dogs, and themselves navigating emotional relationship boundaries with friends and siblings. I suspected when I began that this might be a quickly read YA novel, but then the narrative quickly lurched into serious adult, survival related themes that teens without adequate adult supervision confront in a life-threatening environment (gangs, drugs, imminent Category 5 hurricane environment) in a decrepit house as they battle for survival, values formation, and identity.  The pace of the narrative began at a too leisurely pace, but picked up and the last section, for me at least, was riveting.  The characters speak in a dialect that sometimes was a little hard to follow and use language that sometimes is course and profane. I've had considerable training and some experience in hurricane preparation and response strategies; the challenges for the family and their community struck me as quite realistic, as did their responses to those challenges. Religion is less of an influential factor for this family than peer pressure, economic status, and family traditions.  Friends and compassionate strangers can form community that makes survival possible during harrowing experiences. At times while reading the book, I wanted to throw up my hands and shout, "Can't you see that you're hurting yourself (or your father or your brother or your daughter or your sister) with that choice of action or words?" In the end, potential light at the end of the tunnel flickers for the reader, who is unsure whether the characters will see that light or not. 

  Life can be very hard.  Having trustworthy friends and mentors can help us navigate treacherous situations.  Having a community who loves and respects each of us makes it possible to survive in more healthy ways.  This book doesn't deal directly with it, but a church should be that kind of community, especially when it seeks to follow a Lord who urged that loving God and loving your neighbor are the two greatest command.