So here we are at Mudbound

Mudbound by Hillary Jordan

In a nutshell: In 1946, the McAllan family move to an isolated farm in the muddy fields of Mississippi, where the "Negroes" are violently discriminated against and life is hard for everyone. In parallel, two young men linked to the McAllans, one white, one black, return from the Second World War.

The blurb: This book is written in first person narrative from various points of view- the wife who hates the muddy farm, the husband who loves it, the charming brother-in-law who has difficulty coping with his memories of the war, the black sharecropper/midwife, the black soldier who, having liberated Europe, is still just a "nigger" when he returns, and so on. We follow love and betrayal, friendship and injustice, and see a damning account of how black men and women were treated at this time.

IMHO this is simply yet well-written book that reads easily and deals with several themes: rural life in 1940s rural Mississippi, the treatment of black farmers, racism, and the power and risks of certain friendships in such a context. The most interesting part of the book deals with the treatment of the young black war hero who returns home and the bigotry of the locals. There are in fact many subplots that culminate to a violent and somewhat predictable denouement and the book seems a little too short for one to be able to appreciate it. Though we get good portraits of the characters, and follow several paths, it all seems a little light and rushed with a change of narrator every ten pages or less. As a result it reads like a cross between the Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (read review here) and Little House on the Prairie. A good book, but a little short.