Salvage the Bones

], and it’ll be a long time before its magic wears off … Ward winds private passions with that menace gathering force out in the Gulf of Mexico.

He spread himself over Marquise, guarding him from the goal, and Randall clapped his hands at the edge of the beaten dirt court, waiting for Manny to steal and pass the ball.

Big Henry winked at Manny and laughed.

taut, wily novel, smartly plotted and voluptuously written … Ward makes beautiful music, plays deftly with her reader’s expectations: where we expect violence, she gives us sweetness. When we brace for beauty, she gives us blood’ New York Times

‘A taut, wily novel, smartly plotted and voluptuously written … Ward makes beautiful music, plays deftly with her reader’s expectations: where we expect violence, she gives us sweetness. When we brace for beauty, she gives us blood’ New York Times

Salvage the Bones is an intense book, with powerful, direct prose that dips into poetic metaphor … We are immersed in Esch’s world, a world in which birth and death nestle close, where there is little safety except that which the siblings create for each other. That close-knit familial relationship is vivid and compelling, drawn with complexities and detail’ Los Angeles Times

Junior quit searching for bottles and sat next to me, playing with bubbles.

Manny and Randall whistled to each other, played ball, and others arrived: Big Henry and Marquise.

It was an asthma squeak.

“Skeet,” Junior squeaks.