Mudbound

Prejudice manifests itself in numerous ways in Jordan's award-winning debut, from the subtle to the violent. In 1946, Laura McAllan, a city girl by birth, is attempting to raise her kids on her husband's Mississippi Delta farm, a location she finds strange and unsettling. Two young men who have returned from the war to farm the land join the family in the middle of their hardships. Laura's brother-in-law, Jamie McAllan, is charming, gorgeous, and troubled by his battle memories. He is everything Laura's husband is not. The black sharecroppers who own the McAllan farm have an oldest son named Ronsel Jackson, who has returned home looking like a war hero. But in the Jim Crow South, he is still seen as less than a man, despite his valor in defending his nation. The unexpected bond between two brothers-in-arms propels this gripping book toward its inevitable conclusion.

Each family's men and women give their accounts of what happened, and we are pulled into their lives as they take part in a massive catastrophe. "Her characters walked straight out of 1940s Mississippi and into the part of my brain where sympathy, anger, and love reside," writes Kingsolver of Hillary Jordan. "This made my heart race." They remain at my side."