Mudbound by Hillary Jordan

While at a library conference in 2007 I picked up a galley copy of Hillary Jordan’s novel ‘Mudbound’. On the trip home, I devoured this beautifully written debut novel and looked forward to reading more from this promising author. Just a few days ago I saw Jordan’s newest book, ‘When She Woke’ on the shelf and seeing it prompted me to give you a little nudge in her direction.

Mudbound tells the story of Henry McAllen who brings his city-bred wife Laura to live in a desolate cotton farm in the Mississippi Delta. The year is 1946 and WW II war-weary soldiers are just starting to come home, hoping to resume a life on the farms where they grew up. Henry’s brother Jamie returns to help his older sibling along with Ronsel Jackson, the eldest son of a black sharecropper who lives on the McAllen farm.

Laura makes a noble attempt to make the Delta her home but finds it difficult with no indoor plumbing or electricity. The isolation and the primitive conditions where Laura must raise 2 young children becomes an everyday struggle for her and she fears for her sanity and her children’s safety. When the relentless rains come, the waters rise over the only accessible road and the family becomes stranded in a quagmire of mud, emotional tension and ingrained racial bigotry. The combination of these difficulties lead to gruesome and fateful consequences in a novel that brings a deluge of interesting characters and a convincing sense of place.
This book is filled with fully formed characters and beautiful prose. In fact it earned the Bellwether Prize for Fiction, awarded biennially to a first literary novel that addresses issues of social justice. If you are looking for a tidy and sweet read, this is not it. But if you are longing for a page turner that brings you face to face with a story wrought with tension and memorable characters, this could be it.