This is the author’s first book since “Sing, Unburied, Sing,” winner of the National Book Award in 2017, and the first fictional work set in the distant past. The 45-year-old Ward, the only Black author to receive two NBAs for fiction, has been widely praised for her striking lyricism and
Here is the statement from the author about her latest novel:
“I also wanted to encourage readers to feel with and for Annis (the book’s protagonist), and to recreate her experience as viscerally as possible. It took years and multiple drafts to understand how Annis and enslaved people might have retained their sense of self, their sense of hope, in a time and place that attempted to negate both, day in and out.”
Jesmyn Ward is the only black author to receive two NBAs for fiction. Ward grew up in Mississippi and has set much of her work in the fictional Mississippi town Bois Sauvage. She won National Book Awards for her two most recent novels: “Salvage the Bones,” which takes place around the time of Hurricane Katrina, and the surreal “Sing, Unburied, Sing,” about the struggles of a Mississippi family. She is also a recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” grant and, in 2022, became the youngest winner of the Library of Congress’s Prize for American Fiction, a lifetime achievement honor.