Netgalley Mini-Reviews: Sing! and Sing, Unburied, Sing

Jojo is used to his parents not being around. He is happy most days to live with his little sister Kayla and his grandparents. But when his dad is released from prison, his mother Leonie packs up the kids and takes them across Mississippi to bring him home. Sing, Unburied, Sing is the story of one family's attempts to reach each other, but it's also an examination of the ways history haunts us many generations later.

This book is gracing many best books of the year lists and it won the National Book Award. After so many glowing reviews, perhaps there isn't much for this reviewer to write. But I will add my voice to  the chorus that says that Jesmyn Ward is one of the most excellent writers working today. She can evoke a powerful sense of place and history. She also writes characters so carefully--by the time the book is over, readers feel that they have truly gone through this journey with Jojo, held little Kayla when she's scared, and relived a painful past with Pop. Ward has written another beautiful, evocative, thought-provoking story; I'm so glad we get to experience her writing.

Sing, Unburied, Sing
By Jesmyn Ward
Scribner September 2017
285 pages
Read via Netgalley

Keith and Kristyn Getty are well-known as musicians, songwriters, and worship leaders. They believe that the Bible commands each of us to sing often and in many settings. In Sing! they remind us that singing together deepens our connection with the family or congregation we sing with, as well as our connection to God.

Some of you may know that I am a part of the music team at our church. I sing with our choir, sing solos sometimes, pick music for our praise team, and lead the congregational singing. I was hopeful that this book would help me to bridge the divide between the people who happily sing every week and the ones who look like they would rather do anything else than sing in public. While Sing does offer a lot of basic information about why singing is important, I was hoping for some more specific stories about reaching non-singers instead of reinforcing the joy and power of song for musicians. I did appreciate reading about the impact songs have on us, though--most of us can tell you the song that represents a certain time for us or still sing the lyrics of our favorite song from a decade ago. This book is a good starting place for people who work in churches or want to add more music to their families and congregations.

Sing: How Worship Transforms Your Life, Family, and Church
By Keith Getty and Kristyn Getty
B Books September 2017
176 pages
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Review: Salvage the Bones

Salvage The Bones: A Novel

By Jesmyn Ward

Bloomsbury August 2011
(Finalist for the 2011 National Book Award)

 

A hurricane is on its way to Mississipi, but fifteen year old Esch is unconcerned. Hurricanes come through her town all the time. Besides, she has bigger problems on her mind. Her brother Skeetah’s beloved pit bull China has just given birth to puppies. Her brother Randall is vying for the scholarship that will allow him to pursue his dreams of playing basketball. Youngest brother Junior is growing up without the love of a mother and largely without a father, since he is often drunk and distant. Esch is pregnant with the baby of her brother’s friend, a boy who has a girlfriend and seems to have little interest in Esch anymore. And the hurricane on its way? The hurricane is called Katrina.

Ms. Ward sets up a very tense situation from the beginning. Every day is tough for this family, even before the disaster that the reader knows is imminent. I wasn’t sure how much I would like this book. It takes a little time to get invested in, perhaps because the reader knows what is coming and is eager to find out what happens to the family. It feels at time as if you are just flipping pages to get to the main event – how will they make it through the hurricane?

This book does an amazing job of setting the place. You really feel like you are in The Pit, the rural part of Bois Savauge where Esch and her family live.

“Pines sprout up in the ditches along the edge of the park, aside the netless basketball goals, under the piece-meal shade of the gap-toothed wooden play structure sinking into the earth, beside the stone picnic tables with their corners worn smooth by rain, even in the middle of the baseball field overgrown with grass. Maintenance workers, usually county convicts in green-and-white striped jumpsuits, come out ounce a year and halfheartedly try to trim back the encroaching wood, mow the grass to bloom, the pine seedlings. The wild things of Bois Sauvage ignore them; we are left to seed another year.”

Another very striking thing is Esch’s comparison of her own life to Greek mythology. During the week before the hurricane, she is reading the story of Medea and Jason and applies it to her own life in very striking ways. Portions of the novel are incredibly beautiful and poetic and juxtaposed with the gritty despair of dog fighting, poverty, and destruction, it is very impactful.

“Is this how Medea ran with her brother, hand in hand, away from their father’s hold to join the Argonauts? Did every step feel like the running leap a bird takes before flight?”

It takes some time to get invested in Salvage the Bones, but Ward has written a powerful meditation on love and family and the things that remain constant when everything falls apart.