Let Us Descend, the new novel from two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward, is out now from Jonathan Ball Publishers!

Let Us Descend is a haunting masterpiece, sure to be an instant classic, about an enslaved girl in the years before the Civil War.

Every novel has to start somewhere, and in the video below Ward explains her linear style of writing and how she rewrote the first few chapters of the book.

About the book

‘The first weapon I ever held was my mother’s hand.’

On a slave plantation in the Carolinas, Annis has survived in the light of her mother’s resilience, comforted by stories of her African warrior grandmother. Everything she knows, she learned from her mother – how to fight, how to be strong, how to grow up in a world shrouded in darkness.

When she is sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, Annis must venture onward through the rich but unforgiving landscapes of the American South alone: from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans, and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation. Searching for relief in memories of her mother, she opens herself to a world beyond her own, teeming with spirits of earth, water, history and myth.

A reimagining of American slavery as beautifully rendered as it is heart-wrenching, Let Us Descend offers a magnificent portrait of the strength of the human spirit and its ability to emerge from darkness into light. This is a story of beauty, love, rebirth and reclamation – a masterwork for the ages.

Watch a video of Jesmyn Ward on writing Let Us Descend:

Categories Fiction International

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