byJesmyn Ward’s 2011 novel Salvage the Bones was one of my birthday presents this year, and I just got through reading it. If you want the plot laid out, you can read the Wikipedia entry or Parul Sehgal’s NY Times review (archived). He died soon after from mouth cancer, or at least that’s what Mother Lizbeth used to tell us when we were little. Even when she was alive, it was full of empty cars with their hoods open, the engines stripped, and the bodies sitting there like picked-over animal bones. Apparently she has no idea that what that does is hammer the wrong forms into your head; when she says “I hear people say X, X, X, X, X, when actually it’s Y!” you’re not going to come away with anything but X.