In Jordan's prize-winning debut, prejudice takes many forms, both subtle
and brutal. It is 1946, and city-bred Laura McAllan is trying to raise
her children on her husband's Mississippi Delta farm-a place she finds
foreign and frightening. In the midst of the family's struggles, two
young men return from the war to work the land. Jamie McAllan, Laura's
brother-in-law, is everything her husband is not-charming, handsome, and
haunted by his memories of combat. Ronsel Jackson, eldest son of the
black sharecroppers who live on the McAllan farm, has come home with the
shine of a war hero. But no matter his bravery in defense of his
country, he is still considered less than a man in the Jim Crow South.
It is the unlikely friendship of these brothers-in-arms that drives this
powerful novel to its inexorable conclusion.
The men and women of
each family relate their versions of events and we are drawn into their
lives as they become players in a tragedy on the grandest scale. As
Kingsolver says of Hillary Jordan, "Her characters walked straight out
of 1940s Mississippi and into the part of my brain where sympathy and
anger and love reside, leaving my heart racing. They are with me still."
Mudbound is the next read for the book club. We've heard it's a great book so pick up a copy and join us in May for a brief discussion.
