And the Winners Are...

Posted by Staff

Last week, The National Book Foundation announced the winners of the National Book Awards.  Listed below are the winners in the three most popular categories.  For more information about each book and the complete list of finalists, click here. Summaries of each book are taken from the book jacket.

Fiction:  Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward.  "A hurricane is building over the Gulf of Mexico, threatening the coastal town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, and Esch's father is growing concerned. A hard drinker, largely absent, he doesn't show concern for much else. Esch and her three brothers are stocking food, but there isn't much to save. Lately, Esch can't keep down what food she gets; she's fourteen and pregnant. Her brother Skeetah is sneaking scraps for his prized pitbull's new litter, dying one by one in the dirt. Meanwhile, brothers Randall and Junior try to stake their claim in a family long on child's play and short on parenting."

Non-Fiction: The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt.  "In this work, the author has crafted both a work of history and a story of discovery, in which one manuscript, plucked from a thousand years of neglect, changed the course of human thought and made possible the world as we know it."

Young People's Literature: Inside Out & Back Again by Thanhha Lai . "Through a series of poems, a young girl chronicles the life-changing year of 1975, when she, her mother, and her brothers leave Vietnam and resettle in Alabama."