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Where the Line Bleeds

by Jesmyn Ward
Where the Line Bleeds

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ISBN13: 9781501164330
ISBN10: 1501164333



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From Powells.com

Black History Month

Staff recommendations, guest essays, and curated reading lists.


Powell's Picks of the Month

Hot new releases and under-the-radar gems for adults and kids.


Staff Pick

Jesmyn Ward’s first novel, set in the same town as Salvage the Bones and Sing, Unburied, Sing, tells the story of twin boys raised in the poverty and despair of the post-Katrina Gulf coast. Over one summer the boys take different paths, only to face the threat of their wounded, estranged parents and their own precarious lives. This story of family, pain, and love brings a world many of us don’t know close to our hearts. Here is a master writer at her beginning, laying out her world for the reader to live in.  Recommended By Doug C., Powells.com

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments

The first novel from National Book Award winner and author of Sing, Unburied, Sing Jesmyn Ward, a timeless Southern fable of brotherly love and familial conflict—“a lyrical yet clear-eyed portrait of a rural South and an African-American reality that are rarely depicted” (The Boston Globe).

Where the Line Bleeds is Jesmyn Ward’s gorgeous first novel and the first of three novels set in Bois Sauvage—followed by Salvage the Bones and Sing, Unburied, Sing—comprising a loose trilogy about small town southern family life. Described as “starkly beautiful” (Publishers Weekly, starred review), “fearless” (Essence), and “emotionally honest” (The Dallas Morning News), it was a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and the Virginia Commonwealth University Cabell First Novelist Award.

Joshua and Christophe are twins, raised by a blind grandmother and a large extended family in rural Bois Sauvage, on Mississippi’s Gulf Coast. They’ve just finished high school and need to find jobs, but after Katrina, it’s not easy. Joshua gets work on the docks, but Christophe’s not so lucky and starts to sell drugs. Christophe’s downward spiral is accelerated first by crack, then by the reappearance of the twins’ parents: Cille, who left for a better job, and Sandman, a dangerous addict. Sandman taunts Christophe, eventually provoking a shocking confrontation that will ultimately damn or save both twins.

Where the Line Bleeds takes place over the course of a single, life-changing summer. It is a delicate and closely observed portrait of fraternal love and strife, of the relentless grind of poverty, of the toll of addiction on a family, and of the bonds that can sustain or torment us. Bois Sauvage, based on Ward’s own hometown, is a character in its own right, as stiflingly hot and as rich with history as it is bereft of opportunity. Ward’s “lushly descriptive prose…and her prodigious talent and fearless portrayal of a world too often overlooked” (Essence) make this novel an essential addition to her incredible body of work.

Review

"Lushly descriptive prose ... with stunning precision. Her prodigious talent and fearless portrayal of a world too often overlooked make her novel a powerful choice for our seventeenth Essence Book Club Recommended Read." Essence

Review

"A resonant novel for any reader." Booklist

Review

"A starkly beautiful debut ... A fresh new voice in American literature." Publishers Weekly

Synopsis

The first novel from National Book Award winner and author of Sing, Unburied, Sing Jesmyn Ward, a timeless Southern fable of brotherly love and familial conflict--"a lyrical yet clear-eyed portrait of a rural South and an African American reality that are rarely depicted" (The Boston Globe).

Where the Line Bleeds is Jesmyn Ward's gorgeous first novel and the first of three novels set in Bois Sauvage--followed by Salvage the Bones and Sing, Unburied, Sing--comprising a loose trilogy about small town sourthern family life. Described as "starkly beautiful" (Publishers Weekly, starred review), "fearless" (Essence), and "emotionally honest" (The Dallas Morning News), it was a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and the Virginia Commonwealth University Cabell First Novelist Award.

Joshua and Christophe are twins, raised by a blind grandmother and a large extended family in rural Bois Sauvage, on Mississippi's Gulf Coast. They've just finished high school and need to find jobs, but after Katrina, it's not easy. Joshua gets work on the docks, but Christophe's not so lucky and starts to sell drugs. Christophe's downward spiral is accelerated first by crack, then by the reappearance of the twins' parents: Cille, who left for a better job, and Sandman, a dangerous addict. Sandman taunts Christophe, eventually provoking a shocking confrontation that will ultimately damn or save both twins.

Where the Line Bleeds takes place over the course of a single, life-changing summer. It is a delicate and closely observed portrait of fraternal love and strife, of the relentless grind of poverty, of the toll of addiction on a family, and of the bonds that can sustain or torment us. Bois Sauvage, based on Ward's own hometown, is a character in its own right, as stiflingly hot and as rich with history as it is bereft of opportunity. Ward's "lushly descriptive prose...and her prodigious talent and fearless portrayal of a world too often overlooked" (Essence) make this novel an essential addition to her incredible body of work.


About the Author

Jesmyn Ward received her MFA from the University of Michigan and has received the MacArthur Genius Grant, a Stegner Fellowship, a John and Renee Grisham Writers Residency, and the Strauss Living Prize. She is the winner of two National Book Awards for Fiction for Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017) and Salvage the Bones (2011). She is also the author of the novel Where the Line Bleeds and the memoir Men We Reaped, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and won the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize and the Media for a Just Society Award. She is currently an associate professor of creative writing at Tulane University and lives in Mississippi.

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Average customer rating 5 (1 comments)

`
SeattleBookMama , January 30, 2018 (view all comments by SeattleBookMama)
Ward is a force to be reckoned with, a literary power house whose books everyone should read.Many thanks to Net Galley and Scribner.Twins Christophe and Joshua are graduating from high school, exuberant and full of plans for the future. The sole source of tension, a longstanding one that is integral to their deepest senses of self, is whether their mother, Cille, will put in an appearance. She lives in Atlanta, but she might come home to see them walk. Then again, she might not. They assure each other that really, only Ma-mee matters. Ma-mee is their grandmother, but she is the one that raised them since they were tiny; in fact, their grandmother really wanted them, and their mother really didn’t.Their father, Samuel, lives locally, and it is at him their anger is unequivocally directed. Known as the Sandman, he is beneath the contempt of even the most humble local citizens, a meth addict with a mouth full of rotting teeth that will do anything, no matter how humiliating or unprincipled, for even the smallest sum of drug money. Samuel has never pitched in a dime to help Ma-mee raise them. The twins’ rage toward him is measureless. The thing that makes this story so visceral, so moving, and so deeply absorbing is the character development and the complexity of the relationships between and among the twins and the two women. Every gesture, every word is weighted with meaning. The best jobs to be had are on the docks, but not everyone can get one.And so “reality [rolled] over them like an opaque fog…” Joshua, the lighter of the twins, is hired, but Christophe can’t get a job there or anywhere else. He’s given in to his cousin’s invitation to deal drugs, and that puts everyone at risk. Highly recommended to those that love outstanding literary fiction, African-American fiction, Southern fiction, and family stories.

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Product Details

ISBN:
9781501164330
Binding:
Trade Paperback
Publication date:
01/16/2018
Publisher:
SIMON & SCHUSTER TRADE
Pages:
256
Height:
.70IN
Width:
5.40IN
Author:
Jesmyn Ward

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