Wrenching, authentic dialogue permeates the book as the characters come to life through rich and detailed description. In her first work of fiction, Where the Line Bleeds (republished on the heels of the success of Sing, Unburied, Sing), all of the traits that have become synonymous with her style are on display. The first woman to win two National Book Awards for fiction for Sing, Unburied, Sing and Salvage the Bones, Jesmyn Ward crafts prose that haunts and halts, soothes and startles. Readers must ask if either young man had a choice, and as the novel approaches its climax, it’s clear Ward wants her audience to engage with more than just the narrative but the underlying political and economic issues it illustrates. As twins Christophe and Joshua navigate life after Hurricane Katrina in Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, they find themselves pulled in two different directions, one respectable and one criminal. Employing an epigraph from Genesis that invokes Rebekah, mother of the second famous set of biblical brothers, Jacob and Esau, Jesmyn Ward establishes that Where the Line Bleeds will be a novel of brotherly love.
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