Olivia: We're often told that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. But what if that's a lie? What if, for some people, survival just means getting better at making impossible, soul-crushing choices, day after day, just to stay alive? Jackson: That’s a heavy thought to start with. It’s the idea that resilience isn’t about bouncing back, but about accumulating scars. It’s a question that sits right at the center of the book we’re diving into today. Olivia: It absolutely is. That brutal question is the heart of Jesmyn Ward's novel, Salvage the Bones. Jackson: And this isn't just an abstract thought experiment for her, is it? Ward lived through Hurricane Katrina in Mississippi. I remember reading that she wrote the book because she was frustrated that the storm, and the people it affected, were fading from public memory. Olivia: Exactly. And she won the prestigious National Book Award for it, basically forcing everyone to look again. She takes that raw, personal trauma and weaves it into something that feels almost mythic. The story is set in the twelve days leading up to Katrina, following a poor, Black family in the fictional town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi. Jackson: Twelve days. It’s like a countdown to the apocalypse. Where do we even begin with a story like that? Olivia: We begin where the book does: with the messy, brutal, and deeply loving reality of what it takes to survive when you have nothing.

Olivia: The family at the center of this is the Batistes. There are four siblings: the narrator, fifteen-year-old Esch; her older brothers Randall and Skeetah; and the youngest, Junior. Their mother is dead, and their father is a distant, often drunk, figure. So they’re raising each other. Jackson: And they are deeply, deeply poor. The kind of poverty that shapes every single decision. Olivia: Precisely. And no one embodies that more than Skeetah. He is fiercely devoted to his pit bull, China, who has just given birth to a litter of puppies. These puppies aren't just pets; they're a potential financial lifeline. Jackson: Right, a way out. He can sell them. Olivia: Exactly. But early on, a crisis hits. Skeetah finds one of the newborn puppies in the shed, twitching and sick. He immediately recognizes the signs of parvo, a highly contagious and fatal disease. Jackson: Oh no. That’s a death sentence for a whole litter if it spreads. Olivia: It is. And what happens next is the first glimpse we get into the brutal calculus of their lives. China, the mother dog, instinctively rejects the sick puppy. She growls at it, refusing to let it nurse, as if she knows it’s a threat to the others. Jackson: Wow, even the animal instinct is harsh. So what does Skeetah do? Olivia: He makes an agonizing choice. He tells his family, "Nothing can make parvo better. Puppies don’t survive that. And if I don’t get rid of this one, the others will catch it. And then they will all die." He decides he has to kill the sick puppy to save the rest. Jackson: Hold on. He just decides to kill it? How are we supposed to feel about that? It feels monstrous. Olivia: It does, and Esch, the narrator, is horrified. But then the book gives us this incredible piece of context. Randall, the other brother, protests, and Skeetah just shoots back, "You know basketball, but you don’t know dogs." Then Randall recalls a memory of their mother. When they needed food for a special occasion, she would go out to the chicken coop, calmly select a chicken, cover its eyes, and swiftly twist its neck. Jackson: So this pragmatism, this ability to make a hard, bloody choice for the good of the group… it’s inherited. It’s a survival skill passed down from their mother. Olivia: It’s exactly that. It’s not cruelty for its own sake; it’s the grim logic of their world. And this logic drives them to even more extreme lengths. A day later, Skeetah is desperate to protect the remaining puppies from worms. He’s heard about a powerful cow dewormer, but it’s only available at a nearby white family’s farm. Jackson: Let me guess. He doesn't have the money to buy it. Olivia: He doesn't. So he plans a heist. He’s going to break into their barn and steal it. He even enlists Esch as a lookout. The whole family gets dragged into it, and they argue about the morality and the danger. Stealing from white people in rural Mississippi is not a small risk. Jackson: I can't even imagine. The tension must have been insane. Olivia: It's palpable. But Skeetah persuades them by laying out the stakes: the puppies could be worth $800, which is enough to send Randall to basketball camp—his one dream. So they do it. The plan almost goes wrong, the family returns, and they are chased through the woods by the owner's dog and the sound of rifle shots. Jackson: This is for dog medicine. It’s just unbelievable. Olivia: In the end, they escape. And in a final, dramatic moment, their own dog, China, viciously attacks the pursuing dog to defend her territory and her puppies. Skeetah has to pull her off before she kills it. He gets the wormer, but they’ve risked their lives and reinforced the deep social and racial divides of their world. Jackson: It's a pattern, then. Every act of protection, every attempt to secure their future, involves some kind of violence or moral compromise. The puppy, the theft… it’s a constant state of crisis. Olivia: It is. And for Skeetah, it’s all driven by this fierce, protective love. He tells another character, "To give life is to know what’s worth fighting for. And what’s love." That’s his entire philosophy, even if it looks brutal and obsessive from the outside. Jackson: That’s a really powerful, if unsettling, way to look at it. But speaking of giving life, that brings us to Esch. Her experience of impending motherhood is the complete opposite of Skeetah's proud, protective stance. It's terrifying and isolating.

Olivia: Absolutely. While Skeetah is fighting for his puppies, Esch is hiding a secret that feels like a sickness. She’s fifteen and pregnant, and she is utterly alone with this knowledge. She says, "Every time I dozed, the truth that I was pregnant was there like a bully to kick me awake." Jackson: A bully. That’s such a visceral way to describe it. It’s not a joy, it’s an antagonist. Olivia: It’s an antagonist she can’t escape. And to cope, she retreats into books. Specifically, Greek mythology. She becomes obsessed with the story of Medea. Jackson: Medea? The sorceress who, when betrayed by her husband Jason, kills their children in revenge? That is an incredibly dark figure to identify with. Olivia: It’s terrifyingly dark. Esch reads about Medea falling in love and thinks, "But even with all her power, Jason bends her like a young pine in a hard wind; he makes her double in two. I know her." She sees herself in this powerful woman who is ultimately broken by a man's betrayal. Jackson: And the father of her baby is Manny, this boy she has a long-standing, unrequited love for. So she’s already anticipating that betrayal, that bending. Olivia: She is. And that connection to Medea becomes horribly real later in the book. Remember Skeetah's dog, China? After the stress of the dewormer and giving birth, she’s weak and agitated. The puppies are relentlessly nursing, and in a moment of pure, instinctual desperation, China snaps. She grabs one of her own puppies—the one that looks most like its father—and kills it. Jackson: Oh, wow. So the Medea parallel isn't just literary. It plays out right in front of her, in the animal world. Olivia: Exactly. And Esch is the one who witnesses it. She sees China, "bloody-mouthed and bright-eyed as Medea," and her internal monologue is just this one, devastating question: "If she could speak, this is what I would ask her: Is this what motherhood is?" Jackson: That’s chilling. Is motherhood this act of violent, desperate sacrifice? Is it a force so primal it can turn on its own creation? Olivia: And this question is even more complicated because Esch is haunted by the memory of her own mother, who was the opposite of this. She remembers her Mama as this figure of almost mythic strength. There are these incredible stories of her Mama catching a baby shark with her bare hands, or calmly pulling a barbed fishhook out of her own palm. She was this solid, unbreakable force. Jackson: So Esch is caught in this impossible position. She has the ghost of a perfect, strong mother she can't live up to, the horrifying example of China as a monstrous mother, and the literary ghost of Medea, the betrayed mother. And she’s just a pregnant 15-year-old girl. Olivia: A pregnant 15-year-old girl who finally confronts the father, Manny. In a heartbreaking scene, she tells him she’s pregnant, and that it’s his. His response is pure cruelty. He denies it, accuses her of sleeping with everyone, and when he feels the swell of her stomach, he yells "Fuck!" and physically throws her away from him. Jackson: The rejection is just absolute. It’s the confirmation of her worst fears, the thing she saw coming in the story of Medea. Olivia: It is. And in that moment, Esch attacks him, scratching and hitting, and she thinks to herself, "This is Medea wielding the knife. This is Medea cutting." She is pushed into that same corner of rage and betrayal. The book is so unflinching in showing how these large, mythic pains are experienced in the most intimate, personal ways.

Jackson: So the whole book is this pressure cooker. The external pressure of the hurricane forces the family into these brutal acts of survival, while the internal pressures of pregnancy, betrayal, and abandonment are crushing Esch. It’s all about what happens when people have absolutely no safety net. Olivia: And Jesmyn Ward forces us to look at things we'd rather ignore. This book has been controversial, even challenged in some schools, for its graphic depictions of dog fighting, its language, and the teen pregnancy. But Ward is making a powerful argument. To "salvage the bones"—to find what's worth saving after a catastrophe—you have to look at the whole, unvarnished truth, no matter how ugly it is. Jackson: The title itself is about that. Salvaging isn't creating something new and beautiful. It's picking through the wreckage to find what's left, what’s still strong enough to build on. Olivia: Exactly. The family's love for each other is real and it's the core of their survival. But Ward shows us that this love is forged in violence, desperation, and poverty. It’s not a sanitized, comfortable love. It’s a love that has teeth. In the end, after the storm has passed and their world is destroyed, the family is still together. The father, in a rare moment of clarity, apologizes to Esch for not protecting her. The community rallies. They are left with the bones of their lives, and they have to figure out how to build from there. Jackson: It’s a brutal but ultimately hopeful message. It’s not about being made stronger, but about being left alive, and choosing to salvage, to rebuild, from the wreckage. It makes you wonder, what parts of our own lives do we sanitize? What 'bones' are we afraid to salvage because the story they tell isn't pretty? Olivia: A question that stays with you long after you finish the book. Jackson: A powerful and necessary read. Olivia: This is Aibrary, signing off.