1,001 Novels: A Library of America
Mudbound (2008)
by Hilary Jordan
Mississippi Delta, Mississippi
Mississippi: 6/18
Mudbound is a classic Susan Straight 1,001 Novels: A Library of America pick, a book that won some award that Barbara Kingsolver made up for unpublished books- it then got published and sold a bunch of copies. The version I checked out from the library was the Ebook version of the Netflix cover version of the book from the Netflix version I'd didn't know about. It's about a well-off but "spinster adjacent" white woman from the upper south who marries a youngish widower- she meets him because he is an engineer travelling around for Government projects during the Great Depression (I think). Little does she know that it is his lifelong dream to go back home (the Mississippi Delta) and become a farmer. It's "little does she know" because he does not bother to tell her during their courtship.
Nevertheless, Laura McAllan (her married name) is cognizant of her incipient spinsterhood and loves the old lug besides, so she agrees to the thing. The title of the book is her somewhat whimsical name for the farm that Henry (the husband) takes over. Henry has a damaged (by service in World War I) younger brother who is a manic pixie dream boy circa the 1940's. The farm has several sharecropping families, some white and some black, and Jamie (the younger brother) befriends the oldest son of one of the black families, Ronsel, also a veteran, and a tank operator to boot (Jamie being a pilot).
If you've been reading this blog, you know how this is going to end up, not well for the African American World War II veteran. And reader, it does not.
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