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''A brutal, moving memoir … Anyone who emerges from America''s black working-class youth with words as fine as Ward''s deserves a hearing'' - Guardian
''Raw, beautiful and dangerous'' - New York Times Book Review
''Lavishly endowed with literary craft and hard-earned wisdom'' - Time
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The beautiful, haunting memoir from Jesmyn Ward, the first woman to win the National Book Award twice
''And then we heard the rain falling and that was the blood falling; and when we came to get in the crops, it was dead men that we reaped'' - Harriet Tubman
Jesmyn Ward''s acclaimed memoir shines a light on the community she comes from in the small town of DeLisle, Mississippi, a place of quiet beauty and fierce attachment. Here, in the space of four years, she lost five young black men dear to her, including her beloved brother – to accidents, murder and suicide.
Their deaths were seemingly unconnected, yet their lives had been connected by identity and place. As Jesmyn dealt with these losses, she came to a staggering truth: the fates of these young men were predetermined by who they were and where they were from, because racism and economic struggle breed a certain kind of bad luck.
The agonising reality brought Jesmyn to write, at last, their true stories and her own.
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''Acute and often beautiful'' - Financial Times
''Haunting'' - Laurie Penny, New Statesman Books of the Year
''Elegiac, rage-filled, and uncommonly brave'' - Vogue
''A brilliant book about beauty and death'' - Los Angeles Times
''Essential'' - San Francisco Chronicle
''Burns with brilliance'' - Harper''s Bazaar
''Unvarnished and penetrating'' - Elle
