The Costco Connection - September 2017

Staff book picks

wanted to tell required me to learn how to write fiction,” she says.

When asked what she’d most like readers to know about this book, Ward says, “I write about what I know. The book isn’t autobiographical in any way, but there are many details that are drawn from my experience or the experiences of my friends and family. The setting is based on my hometown in Mississippi, where I live. I hope people will come to understand something about this place; about how this place is not dissimilar to many towns in the U.S.; how history reaches into the present for many of us in this country, and how pervasive the issues that my characters confront are. I hope readers from similar places will see themselves, and that those from different places will feel empathy for our experiences.”

Sing, Unburied, Sing

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I’M NOT too shy to admit that sometimes I’m a little late to the book party. People who read Salvage the Bones— or any of Jesmyn Ward’s other books—know that her writing is something special. I didn’t discover her until I recently read

Sing, Unburied, Sing.

This novel tells the story of siblings Jojo and Kayla, who live with their grandparents and get occasional visits from their mother, Leonie. When their white father is released from prison, Leonie packs the kids and a friend into the car to drive across Mississippi to meet him.

Ward says she’s always been a reader and made attempts at writing from middle school on.

She began with poetry, but made a change in college. “I realized that the stories I

NEW IN THE WAREHOUSE

KEN BURNS is a master at making documen-taries. The Vietnam War: An Intimate History serves as the companion piece to his documentary The Vietnam War, which premieres on PBS on September 17.

Burns and his collaborator, Geoffrey C. Ward, have crafted a book that pulls readers into the chaos and intensity of combat while explaining how the U.S. got into Vietnam. It also tries to understand why the war happened the way it did and to clarify its complicated legacy.