Reading Well: Where the Line Bleeds by Jesmyn Ward

I really loved Sing, Unburied, Sing and when I realized it was the third book of a loose trilogy (connected by geography, not by characters as far as I know), I got the other two books into my queue.

Where the Line Bleeds (2008) is the first of those three, focused on a set of twins in rural Louisiana in the months before and after their High School graduation. A lot of the comments about Sing, Unburied, Sing apply here: the book is lyrical and generous and fantastically empathetic to slices of American, and specifically African-American, life that are usually either hidden or portrayed in fairly simplistic ways.

A minor example: the twins are both tempted by illegal means to generate income and wake up early on the weekends to tend their grandmother’s yarn and garden.

In other words, the characters–the twins, their immediate family, the network of aunts/uncles/cousins that surround them, the rest of the small-town community–are woven from strands of real life, frayed and intertwined and knotted as that is.

The flora and fauna of their world–the streams and rivers, the parks and forests and yards, the snakes and dogs–are very well drawn, and those elements combined with the ever-present, oppressive heat and sweat and swelter all add to a palpable realism that is maintained throughout the story.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

Weave a full and compelling narrative out of such a small thing. There is less plot here than a passage of time, and while there are moments of conflict and resolution, struggle and success, the overall arc of the book is merely a slice of life deeply rooted in a handful of characters and their community.