Hillary Jordan

336 pages

I had heard a lot of buzz about Mudbound on other book blogs. I was interested in reading it but when it became an Alex Award Winner earlier this year, I moved it right to the top of my list.

On the Flap:

When Henry McAllen moves his city-bred wife, Laura, to a cotton farm in the Mississippi Delta in 1946, She finds herself in a place both foreign and frightening. Laura does not share Henry’s love of rural life, and she struggles to raise their two young children in an isolated shotgun shack with no indoor plumbing or electricity, all the while under the eye of her hateful, rascist father-in-law. When it rains the waters rise up and swallow the bridge to town, stranding the family in a sea of mud.

My Thoughts:

I usually try to write up my own little synopsis of a book but this one just had me flustered. I couldn’t figure out how to describe it in a succinct fashion so I decided to take a hand from the publisher rather than re-inventing the wheel.

It’s hard to say that I loved a book that deals with such tough subject matter as prejudice, hatred, and violence but when the author is so skilled in evoking emotion, you gotta love it.

When Laura McAllen’s husband Henry drops the bombshell on her that they are leaving her city home and all of her family behind and moving to the Mississippi Delta in a week, I was angry at his lack of consideration for her feelings and sympathetic to Laura and her difficulty in adapting. I’m not sure I could go from having a shower in my home to bathing once a week and then having it be such a chore that it is turned into something that must be done rather than an enjoyment.

The profiles of the racism and prejudice are difficult but they are moving. It’s a sad journey back into our past where these events took place but, as with other painful historical facts, it is necessary to revisit them to keep the memories alive so that the learning continues.

I was really drawn in by Mudbound, much more than I expected to be. I would recommend this to lovers of historical and/or southern fiction. There are also WWII elements to this story but they are played out to a lesser extent. (4.5/5)