CANCELLED: Due to medical circumstances, Jesmyn has been forced to cancel her tour. We apologize for any inconvienience. Mississipppi native Jesmyn Ward’s second novel, Salvage the Bones (Bloomsbury, $15) won the National Book Award in 2011. Tonight, we are privileged to host this extraordinarily-gifted writer whose family of characters “deals with the threat and then the actuality of Hurricane Katrina in much the way that Faulkner’s folk once dealt with fire and flood; the voice here is lyric, unsparing, and fierce.” As the twelve days that make up the novel's framework yield to their dramatic conclusion, this unforgettable family – motherless children sacrificing for one another as they can, protecting and nurturing where love is scarce-pulls itself up to face another day. A big-hearted novel about familial love and community against all odds, and a wrenching look at the lonesome, brutal, and restrictive realities of rural poverty, Salvage the Bones (Bloomsbury, $15) by Jesmyn Ward is muscled with poetry, revelatory, and real. Presented in collaboration with The Center for Literature and Theater at Miami Dade College.