What We Say: “The first weapon I ever held was my mother’s hand.” So begins the much-anticipated fourth novel by Jesmyn Ward, her most magnificent work yet. Let Us Descend is a reimagining of American slavery that takes the reader through the forests, swamps, and rivers of the American South, via a world teeming with spirits. At the heart of this harrowing yet beautiful book is a story of the transcendent power of the love between a mother and daughter.
What They Say: “Ward’s specificity about the horrors of that journey – the beatings, the rapes, the near drownings, the actual drownings – is brutal. But there is also beauty: she has a poet’s ear and her repetition of phrases and conjunctions is hypnotic” – Spectator
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