"Impoverished twins living along the Mississippi Gulf Coast struggle to survive after high school in Ward's starkly beautiful debut. Abandoned by their mother and raised by their loving but ailing grandmother, Joshua and Christophe DeLisle know job prospects are slim in rural Bois Sauvage, so they spend their days playing basketball and flirting with the local girls. Eventually, even with no work history, Joshua is hired to work on the docks, but Christophe falls in with the brothers' drug-dealing cousin. Too ashamed to admit that he spends his days in the park selling marijuana, Christophe secretly contributes to the family's expenses with regular 'deposits' to his grandmother's purse. But when Christophe decides to start selling more dangerous drugs, tensions between the twins grow, and the arrival of their long-absent drug addict father sparks a violent confrontation. A fresh new voice in American literature, Ward unflinchingly describes a world full of despair but not devoid of hope." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"Starkly beautiful...A fresh new voice in American fiction." Publishers Weekly

“Her prodigious talent and fearless portrayal of a world too often overlooked make her novel a powerful choice for our seventeenth Essence Book Club Recommended Read.” Essence

“I feel like I have read the debut work of the next Faulkner, or Capote, or OConnor, a great Southern writer whom my children might some day read in their college classes." Kenneth Jones, Oxford Eagle

“Jesmyn Wards debut novel immediately sets her apart as a young novelist to watch closely.” Daniel Van Mieghem, Literary Fiction Review

"A richly textured tale...like the best fiction, [it] creates its own world." Susan Larson, New Orleans Times-Picayune

"A resonant novel for any reader." Booklist

"Ward's beautiful language allows the location and characters to come alive...will appeal to teens who can see themselves here or who are interested in discovering realities far from their own lives." School Library Journal

"A promising debut." Kirkus Reviews

"...An emotionally honest snapshot of an overlooked America: small-town, economically stagnant and black." William J. Cobb, Dallas Morning News

"A remarkable first novel...a lyrical yet clear-eyed portrait of a rural South and an African-American reality that are rarely depicted." Anna Mundow, The Boston Globe

"The greatest strength of this novel is Ward's ability to capture in perfect nuance the smallest gestures and details of setting in order to bring the world she depicts to life, often through the wordless way in which the characters communicate." Jennifer Deitz, Palo Alto Weekly

From a young up-and-coming writer comes this powerful, beautifully written novel set in the post-Katrina Gulf Coast.