By Jesmyn Ward. As Esch's father recovers from his hand injury, Esch and her brothers prepare the house as best they can for the onset of Hurricane Katrina. Esch tells Manny he is the father of her baby - can Manny respond with the love that Esch so desperately wants?

It is 2005. 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 to freely without getting any love or respect in return. The story takes place against the backdrop of Hurricane Katrina forming out at sea, then descending on the country with terrifying force.

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.

Abridged by Jeremy Osborne
Read by Cush Jumbo

Producer: Rosalynd Ward
A Sweet Talk Production for BBC Radio 4. Show less