• SITE
• HOMES
• MOTORS
• CAREERS
• STUFF

Winner of the Bellwether Prize for Fiction, an award founded by Barbara Kingsolver to an unpublished author, Dallas-born Hillary Jordan’s “Mudbound” is set in the Delta country of rural Mississippi. Told in the vernacular of the six main characters, all of who become unwitting players in the tragedy that unfolds piece by piece in the year just after the end of World War II.

Due to the unforeseen death of a family member, Laura McAllan is wrenched from her beloved Memphis and relocated to the Delta farm her husband Henry sees as his destiny. It is not a beautiful place. Flat and wet, Laura quickly christens the farm Mudbound. When her two young daughters come down with whooping cough, she makes the acquaintance of Florence Jackson, wife of their black tenant farmer. Florence is a midwife, and sometimes hired maid, and mother to returning war hero Ronsel, a decorated tank gunner from an all-black artillery unit that fought in the Battle of the Bulge. But this is the Jim Crow South, and no black man is allowed to carry the hero mantle for long.

Enter Jamie McAllen, Laura’s brother-in-law. Jamie is also a returning hero, a decorated bomber pilot who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Laura’s infatuation with her husband’s younger brother pulls the story in a romantic direction that, at first, seems inharmonious with all that has come before. But Jordan has firm control of her story, and by the final page, all the tangled plot ends have been sorted out, with each strand contributing to the tragedy that has been sensed from the novel’s opening lines.

There is much to admire in “Mudbound.” A great deal of information is given about farming on shares in the 1940s, about the unwritten laws of the racist south, and presented in such a way that blends effortlessly into the story. I especially appreciated how Jordan explains the difference between farming on shares and tenant farming in this dialogue from right after Hap Jackson, the black tenant, suffers a broken leg:

“He asked if we’d be wanting to use one of his mules and I said what if we did for a while. And he said then we’d have to pay him a half share instead of a quarter and I said but the field is already broke. And he said but you still got to lay em off and fertilize and plant and if you using my mule to do it you got to pay me a full half share.”

Jordan nails the dialogue. She understands her setting and the time period. She has every element of superb storytelling firing on all cylinders. A fine first novel, “Mudbound” will leave you waiting with anticipation for this author’s second effort.

  

Cindy Bonner of Victoria is the author of “Lily,” “Right from Wrong” and other novels set in Texas. E-mail cwbonner@sbcglobal.net.