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Mudbound is a story set in the Mississippi delta country in 1946. It is about complex relations between a white family that owns the land and a black family that helps to farm the land. It is also about war and the Jim Crow conditions that existed in the South during that era.

Hillary Jordan, in her debut novel, took on the daunting task of presenting the story through the eyes of six different narrators. That would seem to be difficult enough, but making it even more difficult is the fact that there are both male and female narrators. Furthermore, three are white and three are black.

The book (published in 2008) received almost universal critical acclaim. However (there almost always seems to be a however), I read one review which criticized the bouncing back and forth created by alternating narrators, saying that it disrupted the flow of the story. I don’t buy that. I agree that if it had not been done with skill, it would have been a distraction. But it was done with great skill.

I was reminded of David Payne’s very fine novel, Ruin Creek (1993), in which he expertly told the story from the respective viewpoints of male and female narrators of different generations. But Jordan, who is white, did something even more daring by speaking with the voice of three black narrators, one female and two males � and she pulled it off.

All of the principal characters are flawed to some degree or the other, but all have some redeeming qualities � except one. Pappy is a racist bigot of the worst kind. He hates black people, but then he doesn’t have much use for white people either. He is a born hater.

The reviewer who wrote the critical review mentioned earlier, found fault with how this character was presented, that he was unrealistic to the point of being “cartoonish.� But he isn’t unrealistic; his type did exist, in fact, still exists. Times have changed, but people with Pappy’s warped vision still exist in our society today.

The reviewer summed up her criticism by saying that in the final analysis the novel failed because nobody “changed,� and therefore what was the point? Well, the point might be, guess what, people don’t always change. Sometimes there is no repentance or redemption. I suppose she expected them all to hold hands and sing Kumbaya at the end. But in this story, that would have been cartoonish.

Reading this novel was like watching a slow motion train wreck that was about to occur. I knew something bad was going to happen, but I was powerless to do anything about it. It is not a good book for light summer reading at the beach, but it is a thought provoking book that deserves the wide readership that it has experienced and the favorable reviews that it has received.

I ran across an interview with the author in which she is considering a sequel. Sequels are rarely as good as the original, but I would like to see what happens to these characters down the road. Who knows, maybe they will change.

P.S. ~ Yes, I did focus on the negative review above, but I would be remiss if I didn't mention that there are a number of excellent, positive reviews of this book here at GR's and I recommend them for your reading enjoyment.