By Jesmyn Ward.
Abridged by Jeremy Osborne.

It is 2005. Hurricane Katrina is forming out in the Gulf. In rural Mississippi, Skeetah's dog China is giving birth to a set of puppies. Skeetah's younger sister Esch watches. She is distracted by the arrival of Manny, the boy she loves.

Fifteen-year-old Esch is the narrator of the novel. She lives in poverty with her brothers and her father in the Mississippi woods near the small town of Bois Sauvage. Skeetah's beloved pit-bull, China, is a fighting dog and her puppies will be trained to fight too, if they survive. Esch's mother died giving birth to her youngest brother Junior. The only other people in Esch's world are her father, her older brother Randall and her brother's friends. They include Manny, who she worships and gives herself too freely, without getting any love or respect in return.

Salvage The Bones won the 2011 National Book Award in America. It is Jesmyn Ward's second novel and is based on her own experience of Hurricane Katrina and growing up black and in a poor family in rural Mississippi. She is currently the Grisham Writer in Residence at the University of Mississippi.

Read by Cush Jumbo.

Producer: Rosalynd Ward
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