Where The Line Bleeds

Where The Line Bleeds

Adult fiction
"'Well,' Christophe said low, out of the corner of his mouth, 'I
guess we know why she didn't come.' He tossed the keys in the air;
they glittered in the dim light and fell with a dull metal crush into
Christophe's palm.
'Why show up when you give us a car? Guess she's really done
now.'
'Yeah, I guess she is."
The she Christophe and Joshua, Black twin protagonists of Jesmyn
Ward's Where The Line Bleeds, are discussing is their Mom, Cille.
She'd taken off a long time ago to have a career, leaving her sons to
be raised by her now blind mother and their extended family. She
rarely visits. The event she's passing on is their high school
graduation.
Their father, Sandman, doesn't attend either. He and Cille have
gone their separate ways. He's a drug addict who will do anything to
get the fixes his body craves. The twins fear his reappearance.
The small Mississippi Gulf Coast town of Bois Savage the boys
have grown up in is not big on higher education. So Joshua and
Christophe, like their classmates, set off on a weary round of job
searching. Even the fast food joints aren't hiring.
Joshua gets hired at the docks. As the summer wears on things
get strained between the twins. Joshua resents his exhausting, boring
job moving cargo. He wonders if he'll be stuck in that dead end
position the rest of his life. Ashamed and wanting to help the family
financially, Christophe begins selling drugs. At first it's just
grass...
To complicate their situation further, the twins' parents are
going to arrive separately, adding their dramas to the mix.
If you take to this narrative you're in good luck. It's first
in a trilogy, followed by Salvage The Bones and Sing, Unburied, Sing,
crafted by a master story teller, well versed in small town Southern
life and possessing a voice like no other.
On a purrrsonal note, we're coming up on another weekend. It was a
good week although from time to time I found myself impatient to go
out and have a good time with people. Can you relate? I'm finishing
week six on walking, about to add a scarf to my outerwear. But
something REALLY EXCITING happened yesterday morning.
Wednesday night my statistics professor, Craig, was teaching about
ANOVA. He kept telling us not to feel bad if we didn't get the
concept. Just keep on with the formulas and it would come. But I
totally got it. So yesterday morning I emailed Craig an analogy I
made up to demonstrate my comprehension. He liked it so much he's
going to use it in future teaching. Who is turning into a statistics
goddess? (Jules)
My hooman the statistics goddess. (Tobago)
A great big shout out goes out to our readers. If you haven't got out
your winter gear it might be a good time to do so.
Tobago and Jules Hathaway


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