Jesmyn Ward's debut novel is set in the world where she herself grew up: small-town Mississippi, right on the Gulf of Mexico. It's not an area of the world I knew much about, and it's certainly not somewhere I had a hankering to visit...but I do now! I want to see the bayous she so vividly describes, I want to feel the salty breeze off the sea, I want to smell the pine forests along the coast. And most of all I want to meet her characters, whom I haven't been able to get out of my head.

The novel opens with twins Joshua and Christophe poised on the brink of change, just about to leave high school, exhilarated and fearful at the same time. The small Creole town they live in is poor and drug-riddled, and they are acutely aware of how much hangs in the balance for them: they must either get a job and survive, albeit not in great comfort, or remain jobless and sink without trace into the underworld, as so many others (including their estranged father) have done before them.

The twins have always done everything together. (Ward succeeds in making them beautifully distinct yet intertwined right from the first few pages.) Naturally they assume that they will get jobs in the same place as well, but only Joshua is hired as a dockyard worker. Desperate to do his bit to help out his grindingly poor family, Christophe is sucked into selling drugs; Joshua's misguided attempts to dissuade him only push his brother further away from him. Bewildered by the distance that has suddenly appeared between them, the brothers engage in a heartbreaking struggle to come to terms with it in their different ways. Finally, a confrontation with their drifter father forces them to deal with the situation and with each other.

Ward is skilled at creating her characters; not only the twins but also their family members and friends come across as individuals. Just as striking is the way Ward weaves the relationships among all these individuals. This is a community in which family and social ties are strong, and the twins are touchingly devoted to their ageing grandmother Ma-mee, who raised them after their mother was lured away to the bright lights of Atlanta. Equally touching are the boys' constant attempts to make allowances for their mother, who they know let them down but whom they can't quite condemn.

Click here to hear Jesmyn Ward reading from the start of her novel: (from http://bombsite.powweb.com/ )