Sing, Unburied, Sing

I could tell you the plot, about 13 year old Jojo and her 3 year old sister Kayla accompanying their indifferent and often high mother Leonie to Parchman Penitentiary to pick up their father Michael from jail. About his racist (white) parents as well as Leonie's folks, her mother wasting away from cancer and her father, whom Jojo idolizes, still working the little patch of land in Bois Sauvage on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi.

Leonie is haunted by the ghost of her brother Given. Yes haunted as in Given shows up silently whenever she gets high. Jojo picks up his own ghost at the prison. Richie we find has a tragic history with Jojo's grandfather. Maybe it's a story of generational trauma, of the low thrum of lingering pain paired with the keen awareness of black bodies dead and discarded by a white system.

Maybe, but what is certain is the pure poetic song of Jesmyn Ward's writing that is just gorgeous. Honeyed words burnishing a horrific history. Another incredible read.