Will Bois Sauvage, the fictional Mississippi town created by the novelist Jesmyn Ward, one day reach the status of William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County? Time will tell, but Ms. Ward has signed a deal with Bloomsbury for a third novel set in the Gulf Coast hamlet of her invention. Her most recent book, Salvage the Bones, won the 2011 National Book Award for fiction.
The new novel is still untitled and will be about an interracial couple living in Bois Sauvage. Ms. Ward is also working on a memoir called The Men We Reaped, described on Publishers Marketplace as “exploring race, rural poverty, and the impact both have had on the men in Ward’s life.” In her speech at the National Book Awards, Ms. Ward revealed that she began writing in her 20s, following the death of her brother.
