Sing, unburied, sing

An intimate portrait of a family and an epic tale of hope and struggle, Sing, You Be Buried, Sing explores the ugly truths at the heart of the American story and the power and limits of family bonds. JoJo is thirteen and trying to understand what it means to be a man. His mother, Leonie, is in constant conflict with herself and those around her. She is Black, and her children's father is white. Trapped in ways that reflect the harsh reality of her circumstances, she wants to be a better mother, but she cannot put her children above her own needs, especially her drug use. When the children's father is released from prison, Leonie packs her children and a friend into her car and drives north to the heart of Mississippi and Parchman Plantation, the state prison. At Parchman, there is another boy, the ghost of a dead inmate who carries all the South's ugly history with him on his wanderings. Rich in Ward's distinctive lyrical language, Sing, You Be Buried, Sing brings the archetypal road novel into twenty-first-century rural America.