Every Bone a Prayer (2020) by Ashley Blooms

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Every Bone a Prayer (2020)

 by Ashley Blooms

Cutshin, Kentucky

Kentucky: 10/16

    I think Kentucky will prove to be my favorite state in this chapter.  It's either going to be Kentucky or Tennessee (It will NOT be Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Arkansas or Missouri).  I was heartened when the jacket copy indicated that Every Bone a Prayer was a work of speculative fiction- a genre that is pretty much completely absent from the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project.  I can only surmise that it has to do with the tastes of editor Susan Straight, who clearly sees this project as an opportunity to the tell the stories of impoverished and neglected women and girls as the priority in her selections. 

  Thus, the speculative fiction still involves a main character who is helpless and abused and spends the entire book in this one holler in Kentucky.  She also talks to crawdads, witnesses life size glass sculptures of people sprout the front yard of near by trailer and slips out of her skin and walks around a skeleton at night.  Other than as a metaphor for the disassociation felt by victims of childhood sexual abuse, I wasn't sure what to make of any of it.