Hillary Jordan discusses and signs Mudbound April 20, 2009

In Jordan's prize-winning debut, prejudice takes many forms, both subtle and brutal. It is 1946, and city-bred Laura McAllan is trying to raise her children on her husband's Mississippi Delta farm—a place she finds foreign and frightening. In the midst of the family's struggles, two young men return from the war to work the land. Jamie McAllan, Laura's brother-in-law, is everything her husband is not—charming, handsome, and haunted by his memories of combat. Ronsel Jackson, eldest son of the black sharecroppers who live on the McAllan farm, has come home with the shine of a war hero. But no matter his bravery in defense of his country, he is still considered less than a man in the Jim Crow South. It is the unlikely friendship of these brothers-in-arms that drives this powerful novel to its inexorable conclusion.

“[A] beautiful debut . . . A superbly rendered depiction of the fury and terror wrought by racism. – Publishers Weekly

Mudbound is the NAIBA (New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Assoc.) Fiction Book of the Year. It won the 2006 Bellwether Prize for Fiction, awarded biennially to a debut novel that addresses issues of social justice. It’s a Book Sense pick and one of twelve New Voices of 2008 chosen by Waterstone's UK. Hillary’s short fiction has appeared in numerous literary journals, including StoryQuarterly and The Carolina Quarterly.

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