Men We Reaped

June 24, 2013
In this riveting memoir of the ghosts that haunt her hometown in Mississippi, two-time novelist and National Book Award–winner Ward (Salvage the Bones) writes intimately about the pall of blighted opportunity, lack of education, and circular poverty that hangs over the young, vulnerable African-American inhabitants of DeLisle, Miss., who are reminiscent of the characters in Ward’s fictionalized Bois Sauvage. The five young black men featured here are the author’s dear friends and her younger brother, whose deaths between 2000 and 2004 were “seemingly unrelated,” but all linked to drug and alcohol abuse, depression, and a general “lack of trust” in the ability of society—and, ultimately, family and friends—to nurture them. The first to die (though his story is told last in the book) was her brother, Joshua, a handsome man who didn’t do as well in school as Ward and was stuck back home, doing odd jobs while his sister attended Stanford and later moved to N.Y.C. Joshua died senselessly after being struck by a drunk driver on a dark coastal road one night. The “wolf” that tracked all of these young men—and the author, too, when she experienced the isolation of being black at predominantly white schools—was the sense of how little their lives mattered. Ward beautifully incorporates the pain and guilt woven her and her brother’s lives by the absence and failure of their father, forcing their mother to work as a housekeeper to keep the family afloat. Ward has a soft touch, making these stories heartbreakingly real through vivid portrayal and dialogue.

Starred review from July 1, 2014

A scorching journey through a heartbreaking Southern landscape, this memoir by National Book Award winner Ward (Salvage the Bones) is perfectly narrated by Cherise Booth, whose nuanced and understated performance allows the raw emotional content of the story to speak for itself. The deaths of five black men in Mississippi and Louisiana are recounted in a sort of reverse chronology, starting with the one who died last and moving back in time to the death of the author's younger brother. The author's own story never takes center stage as she talks about the potential and promise of these young men who were lost in various ways from suicide to accidents to murder, with all of the strife involving racial and social inequities endemic to the American South. Her recollections--sometimes of innocent youth, sometimes of adolescent misbehavior--take on an almost unbearable poignancy because the ends of these brief lives overshadow the occasional sweetness of her memories. VERDICT A must for all libraries. ["Ward's candid account is full of sadness and hope that takes readers out of their comfort zone and proves that education and hard work are the way up for the young and downtrodden," read the review of the Bloomsbury hc, LJ 9/1/13.]--Victoria A. Caplinger, NoveList, Durham, NC

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