Mississippi Library Association

Mudbound

Jordan, Hillary. Mudbound.
Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 2008.
328 pp. $22.95 (hardcover)

In manuscript form, Mudbound won the Bellwether Prize for fiction in 2006. Awarded biennially to a budding writer who demonstrates social change, the prize was established in 2000 by author Barbara Kingsolver. On her Web site she explains the political genre she promotes through the prize with examples such as Toni Morrison’s Beloved, David Guterson’s Snow Falling on Cedars, and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.

Kingsolver stated, “Hillary Jordan writes with the force of a Delta storm” and as the book opens we realize one has just blown through. The first chapter finds brothers Henry and Jamie McAllan taking turns digging a grave for their father, Pappy. They hurry before the next storm hits and the soil is described as, “so wet from all the rain it was like digging through raw meat.” Around four feet, Henry strikes something hard. Slowly he begins to unearth a skull with a huge chunk missing from the back. He continues to dig and hand up bones to Jamie, including shackles still attached to one femur. Jamie smiles as he thinks Pappy would die again if he knew he was about to share eternity with a slave.

The story is told through six different characters with unique personalities. Jamie, a returning WWII veteran, still fights his irrational fears through alcohol. Ironically, his medals for bravery are a direct result of his fears, preferring to take flak from ground gunners than fly over water. Much older brother, Henry, served in WWI and tried to prepare Jamie for the horrors of war. Henry has control issues. He quits a profitable job as an engineer for the Corp in Memphis to take his wife and two offspring to a farm in the Delta to raise cotton, without consulting them. Laura, wife of Henry, is the connecting narrator from which the timeline moves. She is college educated and used to amenities such as indoor toilets and washing machines. When Henry is swindled out of his money for a house in downtown Greenville, it is off to the farm to live in one of the sharecropper’s homes sans running water and electricity. Ronsel, another veteran who served under Patton as a tank driver in the Black Panthers, enjoyed his freedom in Germany by taking a white lover; unfortunately, Mississippi laws prevent him from bringing her home as his wife. Florence and Hap are the proud but cautious parents of Ronsel who returns to Mississippi to help on their tenant farm.

Pappy, full of pure evil, is not given a voice. He is a lazy old coot who lives with the family on the farm because other siblings tired of his mouth. Openly hateful to all blacks and women, he has no redeeming value. This leaves readers wondering if a character can truly be this evil. Conflict occurs as Jamie and Ronsel become drinking buddies and Pappy gathers his clansmen to take care of the problem.

Through interviews with Jordan, one learns the book reflects stories told to her by relatives. She told blogger Kelly Hewitt her stories came from, “outside of Lake Village, Arkansas, just across the Mississippi River from Greenville. But I decided to set my story in the Mississippi Delta instead because it really is, as James Cobb says in the title of his excellent book about the Delta, ‘the most Southern place on earth’.”

Mudbound is packed with storm after storm and one cannot predict the damage to come. This character-driven novel is a worthy addition to any Mississippi library.

Maggie Moran
Public Services and Reference Librarian
Northwest Mississippi Community College

Entry Filed under: Book Reviews
Posted on: June 29th, 2009