I mean, Skeetah loves the dog, but he doesn't mind using her to fight. And that's one of the things that I think many people might find puzzling.

In a way, China, who is the dog, and Esch have parallel lives because they are both loved in their way, but they are used each in their own way. You know what's fascinating to me? I don't know if you mind my drawing this analogy. It's like that's where a lot of the heat was for me and then. I'd had his character in my head for a while, but the relationship between Skeetah and his dog fascinated me so. WARD: Well, I'd had Esch's character in my head for a while and I knew that I wanted to write a novel about her, about a girl that grows up in a world full of men. It opens with a very graphic scene of a pit bull giving birth. It deals with subjects that, as you said, are often not dealt with in literature. I don't think that there's any question about that. It is beautifully written, but it's also a tough read. Because of that, I just didn't expect to win and then, also, because I wasn't that well-known and the book wasn't - it was out there, but it wasn't out there. These aren't popular, I guess, with a lot of, you know, readers. WARD: I thought that the subject matter was too gritty and I thought that the people that I write about and the place that I write about, you know, where they come from. Because of the subject matter? Do you think that the subject matter, you thought, was just too gritty? MARTIN: But did you think that you were a - God, I hate the term 'dark horse,' but I'll use it just for now. I'm very hesitant to assume that good things are going to come to me, so beforehand, I kept preparing myself for losing, you know, and I thought, well, I will prepare myself to be happy for whoever wins and clap. You know, I just did not think that I was going to win. You were so surprised that you almost couldn't talk. MARTIN: What about the award? I'm told that you were very surprised. Welcome, and congratulations on this really significant honor. 'Salvage the Bones' recently won the National Book Award for fiction and Jesmyn Ward joins us now. It's all seen through the eyes of the 15-year-old narrator named Esch. Extreme poverty, sexual abuse, routine violence and survival. In her novel, 'Salvage the Bones,' Jesmyn Ward tells the story of how one family on the Mississippi Gulf Coast endured Hurricane Katrina.īut it also tells the story of what they were enduring before the storm. Sometimes, the stories of life's biggest triumphs and tragedies are best told, not in the headlines or in a cable news crawl, but in literature.

Jesmyn ward salvage the bones review