I purchased Men We Reaped after a riveting hour-long interview Jesmyn Ward gave to NPR radio stung me with anticipation.
The book changed my life.
Ward takes you back and forth through time seamlessly, on a journey to uncover meaning behind the deaths of five men in her life. Along the way I played devil’s advocate in my head. As the answers begin to appear through the Louisiana fog, I looked for ‘holes’ in the theory. I found no valid reasons why a critic might dismiss her case.
That’s just one of the themes. There are others, but simply listing them here in a sentence would be an injustice. Ward weaves them into the memoir using the very personal thread of her own life story. Technically, the writing is a virtuoso; I found myself re-reading paragraphs and wondering, ‘How did she just do that?‘ Emotionally, it is raw electricity.
Simply put, everyone needs to read this book. It is too important not to.
The Healthy Path 