Mudbound
Authors: Hillary Jordan
Tags: #Fiction, #Historical, #Social Science, #Discrimination & Race Relations
Praise for
MUDBOUND
“A compelling family tragedy, a confluence of romantic attraction and racial hatred that eventually falls like an avalanche . . . The last third of the book is downright breathless.”
—The Washington Post Book World
“[A] supremely readable debut novel . . .
Mudbound
is packed with drama. Pick it up, then pass it on.”
—People
, Critics Choice, 4-star review
“
Mudbound
argues for humanity and equality, while highlighting the effects of war . . . [The] mixture of the predictable and the unpredictable will keep readers turning the pages . . . It feels like a classic tragedy, whirling toward a climax. [An] ambitious first novel.”
—The Dallas Morning News
“By the end of the very short first chapter, I was completely hooked . . . [
Mudbound
is] so carefully considered and so full of weight . . . This is a book in which love and rage cohabit. This is a book that made me cry.”
—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“[A] tremendous gift, a story that challenges the 1950s textbook version of our history and leaves its readers completely in the thrall of her characters . . .
Mudbound
may well become a staple of syllabi for courses in Southern literature.”
—Paste
magazine, 4-star review
“Does an excellent job of capturing the impacts of racism both casual and deliberate.”
—The Denver Post
“[An] impressive first novel . . . Jordan is an author to watch.”
—Rocky Mountain News
“This is storytelling at the height of its powers: the ache of wrongs not yet made right, the fierce attendance of history made as real as rain, as true as this minute. Hillary Jordan writes with the force of a Delta storm. 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.”
—Barbara Kingsolver
“Is it too early to say, after just one book, that here’s a voice that will echo for years to come? . . . Jordan picks at the scabs of racial inequality that will perhaps never fully heal and brings just enough heartbreak to this intimate, universal tale, just enough suspense, to leave us contemplating how the lives and motives of these vivid characters might have been different.”
—San Antonio Express-News
“This book packs an emotional wallop that will engage adult and adolescent readers . . . The six narrators here have enough time and space to develop a complicated set of relationships. The fault lines among them converge into a crackling gunpoint confrontation, a stunning scene that ranks as my personal favorite of this year.”
—The Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Refusing to turn the page is not an option. Jordan is able to make her painful subject matter irresistible by putting the breath of life in these people.”
—Richmond Times-Dispatch
“Jordan has an uncanny knack for nailing the voices of characters she has no business knowing, but know them she does.
Mudbound
also reminds us of the sacrifices made by all soldiers, and how the home front isn’t always as appreciative as it should be.”
—MSNBC.com, Can’t Miss column
“Luminous . . . The power of
Mudbound
is that the characters speak directly to the reader. And they will stay with you long after you put the book down.”
—Jackson Free Press
“A page-turning read that conveys a serious message without preaching.”
—The Observer
(U.K.)
“
Mudbound
dramatizes the human cost of unthinking hatred . . . That [she] makes a hopeful ending seem possible, after the violence and injustice that precede it, is a tribute to the novel’s voices . . . The characters live in the novel as individuals, black and white, which gives
Mudbound
its impact.”
—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“If Hillary Jordan’s new book,
Mudbound
, is ever made into a movie, the odds are very good that it will end up on the short list for an Academy Award. Not just because of the quality of Jordan’s writing . . . but also because she tackles some of this country’s most enduring and well-trodden emotional and historical territory.”
—Albany Times Union
“The recognition [Jordan]’s received for the work has been nothing short of sparkling . . .
Mudbound
is as much a tale of racism as it is the transcending powers of love and friendship.”
—Austin American-Statesman
“Full of rich details and dimensional, engaging characters, and it sucks readers in like quicksand from its opening scene.”
—Creative Loafing, Atlanta
“[A] heart-rending debut novel . . . Jordan’s beautiful, haunting prose makes it a seductive page-turner.”
—DailyCandy
“A meticulous, moving narrative.”
—Texas Monthly
“Jordan has crafted a story that shines . . . A good historical novel with a twist of an ending.”
—The Oklahoman
“This is one of the most extraordinary novels I’ve read all year . . . Set against the pull of the land—and of the lonely heart—the ensuing tragedy is both inevitable and heart shattering.”
—Dame
magazine
“Stunning and disturbing . . . A story of heroism, loyalty, respect and abiding love.”
—Rocky Mount Telegram
“No denying that readers in search of straightforward storytelling will be hooked.”
—Memphis Flyer
“Debut novelist Hillary Jordan has crafted an unforgettable tale of family loyalties, the spiraling after-effects of war and the unfathomable human behavior generated by racism.”
—BookPage
“[A] beautiful debut . . . A superbly rendered depiction of the fury and terror wrought by racism.”
—Publishers Weekly
“[A] poignant and moving debut novel . . . Jordan faultlessly portrays the values of the 1940s as she builds to a stunning conclusion. Highly recommended.”
—Library Journal
, starred review
“
Mudbound
is a real page-turner—a tangle of history, tragedy, and romance powered by guilt, moral indignation, and a near chorus of unstoppable voices.”
—Stewart O’Nan, author of
A Prayer for the Dying
and
Last Night at the Lobster
M
UDBOUND
A NOVEL BY
H
ILLARY
J
ORDAN
Published by
ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL
Post Office Box 2225
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225
a division of
WORKMAN PUBLISHING
225 Varick Street
New York, New York 10014
© 2008 by Hillary Jordan. All rights reserved.
First paperback edition, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, March 2009.
Originally published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill in 2008.
Printed in the United States of America.
Published in Canada by HarperCollins
Canada
Ltd.
Design by Anne Winslow.
This is a work of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jordan, Hillary, [date]
Mudbound : a novel / by Hillary Jordan.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-1-56512-569-8 (HC)
1. Farm life—Mississippi—Fiction. 2. World War, 1939 – 1945—Veterans—Fiction. 3. African American veterans—Fiction. 4. Race relations—Mississippi—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3610.O6556M83 2008
813'.6—dc22 2007044471
ISBN-13: 978-1-56512-677-0 (PB)
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Paperback Edition
To Mother, Gay and Nana, for the stories
If I could do it, I’d do no writing at all here. It would be photographs; the rest would be fragments of cloth, bits of cotton, lumps of earth, records of speech, pieces of wood and iron, phials of odors, plates of food and of excrement. . . .
A piece of the body torn out by the roots might be more to the point.
—J
AMES
A
GEE
,
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
Contents
H
ENRY AND
I
DUG
the hole seven feet deep. Any shallower and the corpse was liable to come rising up during the next big flood:
Howdy boys! Remember me?
The thought of it kept us digging even after the blisters on our palms had burst, re-formed and burst again. Every shovelful was an agony—the old man, getting in his last licks. Still, I was glad of the pain. It shoved away thought and memory.
When the hole got too deep for our shovels to reach bottom, I climbed down into it and kept digging while Henry paced and watched the sky. The soil was so wet from all the rain it was like digging into raw meat. I scraped it off the blade by hand, cursing at the delay. This was the first break we’d had in the weather in three days and could be our last chance for some while to get the body in the ground.
“Better hurry it up,” Henry said.
I looked at the sky. The clouds overhead were the color of ash, but there was a vast black mass of them to the north, and it was headed our way. Fast.
“We’re not gonna make it,” I said.
“We will,” he said.
That was Henry for you: absolutely certain that whatever he wanted to happen
would
happen. The body would get buried before the storm hit. The weather would dry out in time to resow the cotton. Next year would be a better year. His little brother would never betray him.
I dug faster, wincing with every stroke. I knew I could stop at any time and Henry would take my place without a word of complaint—never mind he had nearly fifty years on his bones to my twenty-nine. Out of pride or stubbornness or both, I kept digging. By the time he said, “All right, my turn,” my muscles were on fire and I was wheezing like an engine full of old gas. When he pulled me up out of the hole, I gritted my teeth so I wouldn’t cry out. My body still ached in a dozen places from all the kicks and blows, but Henry didn’t know about that.
Henry could never know about that.
I knelt by the side of the hole and watched him dig. His face and hands were so caked with mud a passerby might have taken him for a Negro. No doubt I was just as filthy, but in my case the red hair would have given me away. My father’s hair, copper spun so fine women’s fingers itch to run through it. I’ve always hated it. It might as well be a pyre blazing on top of my head, shouting to the world that he’s in me. Shouting it to me every time I look in the mirror.
