Not Just a Hurricane

I finished Salvage the Bones and holy shit. I read and reread this paragraph on page 255 (of 258), my hands shaking, about fifteen times before I brought the book back to the library:

I will tie the glass and stone with string, hang the shards above my bed, so that they will flash in the dark and tell the story of Katrina, the mother that swept into the Gulf and slaughtered. Her chariot was a storm so great and black the Greeks would say it was harnessed to dragons. She was the murderous mother who cut us to the bone but left us alive, left us naked and bewildered as wrinkled newborn babies, as blind puppies, as sun-starved newly hatched baby snakes. She left us a dark Gulf and salt-burned land. She left us to learn to crawl. She left us to salvage. Katrina is the mother we will remember until the next mother with large, merciless hands, committed to blood, comes.

I even read it aloud to Matt in a voice unsteady with tears. Good God, Jesmyn Ward.

Still really not the sort of book I'd normally seek out to read, but its conclusion, full of the might and thunder of an author bending the English language utterly to her will, was worth any amount of stretch outside my comfort zone.

That's all for today. Just had to share that with you.