Shortly before the American Civil War, an enslaved young woman named Annis is sold South in a fit of rage by the enslaver who fathered her. Separated from her mother, Annis is chained to a group of women forced to walk through swamps and unforgiving terrains from North Carolina to Louisiana. She’s joined on her journey by haunting memories, sympathetic spirits, and ancestors from the other side.

Jesmyn Ward is a must-read author, and while this book has a different feel from her earlier novels, it showcases just how evocative, powerful, and deeply human her writing can be. It's suffused in grief and trauma while also finding power and agency in unexpected places. I love it immensely and already want to read it again.

Thank you to @scribner and #NetGalley for the digital ARC of #LetUsDescend. The opinions expressed here are entirely my own.

Jesmyn Ward writes beautiful books (full stop) about tough subjects that need to be talked about. To say Let Us Descend is about slavery is an understatement. While the main character is a slave (and her ancestors were slaves), Let us Descend is about family, family trauma and family myths passed down the generations. It's about the brutality of the slave trade - ripping families apart, the back breaking work, the cruel/inhumane treatment and punishments. But it's also about the relationships that provided comfort and empowered and sustained them in the face of great adversity and sorrow.

While the spirit/mystical stuff is usually not for me, it works in this case to tie the past and present together and to drive the main character towards her future.

I can't say enough good things about this novel. Jesmyn Ward is a genius, and this is masterful storytelling. I look forward to using this book in class.

Stunning. I knew when I saw this one on Netgalley that I needed to get it, because Ward is a masterful novelist - and she did not disappoint. Achingly sad, but beautiful, I highly recommend this novel set primarily in Louisiana. Part historical fiction, part magical realism, Ward deftly blends the two into a story of loss and love. Annis is a slave on a plantation with her mother, another slave, and her father, the Sire. When he sells her, she embarks on a horrific journey from North Carolina to the slave markets of New Orleans. But her ordeals are only beginning - sold to another family, starving and almost broken, Annis seeks a way out through the gods and goddesses of her ancestors. Absolutely beautiful.

a beautiful and painful novel to read. Taking us on the awful journey of being wrneched from her only home, marched across the country and then sold into slavery (agian) in New Orleans- Jesmyn Ward makes us feel as if we are living through it. Annis is such a wonderful character and I loved the supernatural elements throughout.

Jeamyn Ward holds the Andrew W. Mellon Professorship in the Humanities, plus several book awards. Jeamyn’s writing showcases her intelligence and her brilliance comes through her writing. As a learned reader, the novel was incredible.The story was amazing, but sometimes difficult to read. Let us Descend, in my opinion, could rival Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The subject matter of the novel requires small breaks. The female characters were attached to each other both figuratively and literally.
I think the driving facture In the end, was the goal to be free.

Thank you Jeamyn Ward, Scribner, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read the novel and in return writing an honest review.

Gritty, raw, brutal, painful, yet beautifully written. Jesmyn Ward is an amazing storyteller. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC.

Jesmyn Ward writes a stunning tale of family dynamics and American struggle yet again. I just love how she entices her audience with poetic sorrow.

Ward is a phenomenal author. She captures the beauty and pain of humanity so exquisitely. This book is not for the faint of heart at all - it contains graphic depictions of slavery, brutality, and torture, and should be approached mindfully because it can be difficult to read at times. But it also contains some of the most well-crafted and lovely writing about life that I’ve ever read.

I not only love Ward’s prose, I also fell in love with her characters, and how much personality and nuance she gave them. They genuinely felt real, which strengthened the power of the relationships between them, and made me very invested in their stories.

My only qualm with this was that I got a bit lost in the magical realism aspects at times, which surprised me because I loved the device of the ghost in Sing, Unburied, Sing. But much like with that novel where she used a famous archetype to craft her story (in that example, The Odyssey), I appreciated her usage of Dante’s Inferno to guide the reader through this book as well.

Overall, this really is a remarkable book and I’m thankful that Ward keeps letting us explore the worlds she can create.

Thank you to Scribner and Netgalley for the advanced copy of this work. Let Us Descend is available today!

4.5/5

I don’t think there’s another American writer who captures like Jesmyn Ward does the heartbreak & horrors of this country’s legacy right alongside its hope & humanity.

LET US DESCEND (out today, thanks @scribnerbooks for the dARC) definitely leans heavily toward the former. But even engaging the depth of slavery’s terror, Ward’s writing is viscerality limned in beauty, her work ever a dare to look with eyes wide open at what this country is and has been, but with a heart open to what it could be.

It’s impossible to be familiar with Ward’s life story {her memoir, MEN WE REAPED; her Vanity Fair piece WITNESS AND RESPAIR, Sept. 2020} and not feel the uncomfortable scritch-scratch of complicity while consuming her fiction—this, more than anything, overwhelmed me in the reading of this book. What alchemy, for gutting personal loss to manifest in works of clarity, beauty, & truth.

America doesn’t deserve Jesmyn Ward, but we’re so lucky to have her alive & writing in our midst.

I am always awed when I read a book by Jesmyn Ward! Her writing is elegant, poetic, and evokes emotion. She has an undeniable gift in both her writing and storytelling. I know when I pick up one of her books that I am in the hands of a master storyteller. I was drawn into this reimagining of slavery in America from the very beginning of the book. It is a story of family, love, loss, family history, American history, suffering, and the spirit world. Ward relies on magical realism in the telling of this harrowing and heartbreaking tale.

Annis is the daughter of a slave owner and her enslaved mother. After working in their master's home, her mother takes Annis into the trees and teaches the lessons her own mother once taught her. Annis suffers heartbreak and tremendous loss after her mother is sold and is eventfully sold herself. She and other slaves set out on a gruesome and unforgiving walk from the Carolinas to New Orleans. They will suffer greatly both mentally and physically along the way. Annis is bought and taken to a Louisiana sugar plantation where her life will change once again.

Beautifully written with vivid descriptions and imagery. I enjoyed the magical realism and the way Annis, and the spirits interacted. I enjoyed learning about the strong women in Annis's family tree. Their inner strength and determination were inspiring. This book was one big journey in a young woman's life. It is not always easy reading as the slaves suffer through starvation, mistreatment, rape, being to separated from loved ones, worked hard, bought and sold, and beaten to name a few. Annis experienced so many things in her young life and showed strength, compassion, courage, fear, heartbreak, and love throughout it all.

Ward's writing is powerful and packs a punch! I have a feeling that I will be thinking about and recommending this book for years to come.

Beautifully written, moving, gripping, heartbreaking and hard to put down.

et Us Descend was a highly anticipated read for me. What I expected was lush, beautiful prose, given what I know of Ward's writing and some heartbreaking, hard to think of things that have really happened, given the topic. Ward definitely delivered on both those fronts. Her writing is absolutely unparalleled. The struggles, the loss and the grief absolutely broke my heart. It was definitely a slice of history I wasn't fully aware of and just thinking about the hardships people have had to endure through awful conditions and unforgiving is harrowing. I will admit that the spiritual end of the novel was a bit lost on me. I do appreciate that given how little physical agency the main character had, the spiritual side served to provide respite.

Thank you so much to Scribner for the ARC of Ward's latest.

Jesmyn Ward takes her readers back to the American South in the years before the Civil War in her new novel, Let Us Descend. Here we meet young Annis as a child, learn she was the child of the rape of her mother by their owner, Sire. Annis also learns family history passed down by her mother from her grandmother, Mama Aza, that grounds their origins in Africa. The story is one of slavery, the daily wages paid by each slave to attempt to earn the right to eat, to sleep, to stay with family, to stay alive.

Through Annis we see what price is paid when a slave is sold South. With men chained together and women roped together, these people who are property are herded hundreds of miles from the Carolinas to the New Orleans slave markets to learn a new type of servitude on a sugar plantation. During that long, harrowing ordeal, Annis begins to experience the natural world in a new, sometimes frightening, sometimes familiar, way. Here is where the magical realism enters her life and world. For me, this felt like a link in some ways to the magical ending of Sing, Unburied, Sing, although the voices are different here. This worked very well for me as I read. It became a part of Annis’s daily existence, dealing with non-human, natural entities as well as the people around her.

I highly recommend this book to all who enjoy historical fiction but with the caveat that it contains a large element of magical realism. I found that fit in beautifully with the character and actions of Annis and her story of trying to exist in a world that doesn’t see her as a person at all.

Thank you to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an eARC of this book. This review is my own.

Jesmyn Ward’s new novel is a beautifully written, transportive historical fiction. The story reimagines a tale of slavery with one woman’s journey from the Carolinas to the auctions in New Orleans and into the sugar plantations of Louisiana. Annis is the daughter of a black mother and the white man that enslaved them. As she grows up, her mother imparts wisdom and family history by sharing her grandmother’s history being transported from Africa to the United States. As Annis, braves a brutal walk from Carolina to New Orleans a spirit Aza guides her through the harrowing experience.

A haunting and important subject brought to life with Ward’s typical lyrical and moving prose. The reader is transported into this heartbreaking time in history with this powerfully written story. The imagery is expertly detailed resulting in a stark and striking picture of Annis’s journey, pain and perseverance in a world of slavery.

Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for the opportunity to review this title before its release.

Heart achingly beautiful writing. This author is a national treasure. I will read anything she writes.

I had high expectations for two-time National Book Award-winning novelist Jesmyn Ward’s latest novel which is on every “most anticipated” list, and it does not disappoint. Annis, the young enslaved woman at the center of Ward’s wrenching tale of the antebellum South, is the product of the rape of her mother by the widowed property owner whom Annis refers to as “my sire.” Annis envies her half sisters’ education, eavesdropping on a lecture from Dante’s Inferno from where the title of the novel is derived. Annis’ life is upended when, in retaliation for trying to protect her from the sire’s roving eyes, he selects Annis’ mother for the slave market. This calculated and cruel separation of families causes the mother with whom Annis shares a cabin to explain that the reason “her care [of her children] is all hard slaps and fists” is because she “won’t love what she can’t keep.”

Annis seeks comfort in the arms of Safi (“the first to touch me with kindness after mama left”), but their relationship causes the sire to sell them both, and they are marched into the South by “the Georgia men.” Annis and Safi, along with other enslaved men and women are shackled together, starved and abused by harsh weather and their captors, as they take a harrowing month-long journey from the rice plantation in North Carolina to the slave markets of New Orleans. Safi escapes on the route when her captor neglects to tighten her ropes after he rapes her, leaving Annis alone with her thoughts of her mother, her grandmother, Mama Aza, an Agojie, the famed African warriors from the West African kingdom of Dahomey who was sold into slavery by her husband the King, and spirits, both comforting and treacherous.

Annis confronts the spirit who wears Mama Aza’s face for failing to intervene when her mother had tried to escape to the Great Dismal Swamp, the marshlands of Virginia and North Carolina, where communities of runaway slaves hid for generations before Emancipation. Her attempt was hampered by her young child, and she was caught by the slave patrollers and their dogs and “my sire spent years punishing her until he sold her.” “Why you didn’t spare my mama?” she asks the wind. “Why not me? You could take us out of this place . . . . You could have done more.” Although the tale is bleak, there are moments of joy, such as when Annis is woken to the “honeyed song” of her cabin mate Mary, “so that for one blink in the bowels of this rotten house, tenderness is a touch in my bones.”

Ward has crafted a devastating story recited in powerful, poetic language. She has unleashed her prodigious skills, which have received numerous accolades, to craft a deeply moving and empathic story of loss. Thank you Scribner and Net Galley for affording me the opportunity to read an advance copy of this remarkable novel.

The writing and imagery of this were absolutely beautiful. The sense of grief is almost palpable throughout the whole thing, and I loved the way she made air, water, and earth into characters themselves. It was a bit of magical realism, but felt more spiritual than anything else. However, I never really felt connected to the story itself, or compelled to keep reading. I think I'm very much an outlier in this though, and would recommend to people who have liked her writing.

This book … what a gut-punch and simultaneous testament to beautiful mother-daughter love. The language, which one expects from Ward, is poetic and lovely. So dreamlike, especially with its magical realism.

I think, knowing the author wrote this after the loss of her young husband to COVID during the earliest days of the pandemic (with two young children to care for and when so much was unknown about the illness) made me appreciate this book even more. Ward wrote in the throes of anguish, and I think that emotion made its way through the character of Annis, which means the reader feels every bit of her pain. And, given that this is a story of slavery, there is plenty of misery and pain within these pages.

But, in the end, love and hope – and female strength – transcends.

My mama’s face is slack as a child’s; her limbs are so close, they could be my own. I put my hand on her neck, feel the rush of blood there, the red river that binds her to me. I feel as I only can with her.

Many novels have been written with bees as a symbolic device, but this one stands out. It is presented with a light hand but manages to artfully display the books’ themes of ‘magic’ and wonder, specifically the magic that is a hive of bees – their collaboration, their intelligence, their creation, their collective memory.

This book, with its African spiritual themes of water and memory reminded me of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s The Water Dancer, and also Robert Jones Jr.’s The Prophets (and probably, also, The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois). The magical realm of the novel was incredible, posing the question of what spirits may be out there among us, guiding us, protecting us, thwarting us, and wishing us harm … but most intriguing to me is the notion of matrilineal legacy … that powerful women have been - and still are - hovering among the descendants of enslaved African women today.

The spiritual world was just so well done: one of them, Aza: Aza’s hair settles sleekly to her scalp: dozens of dark rivers winding to the ocean, before sprouting again.

And Annis’s comment: “Mama knew the world was sopping with spirit, that you didn’t need to go to heaven or hell to witness it; she knew it was all here. And now I know, too.”

Most of you know that books with strong senses of place and the natural world really sing to me.

The earth bathes me in the musk of mushrooms and the wilting flower of worm casings.

A buzzard flies overhead before sinking like a spear over the tops of trees.

This book is no exception. Annis’s rebirth and acceptance of the natural world was sublime. I felt the American south on my skin, smelled its damp, saw its tangled greenery, heard the bass of frogs and the hiss of alligators.

I read this book simultaneously with another novel showcasing similar journey themes of a young girl through the wilderness/elements (though in different time frames and under different circumstances – and even girls of different skin color). While the books are wholly different in style (and I preferred this one more), what came across in both is the resilience of the women who came before us – in the case of these two books, teens – facing the harshest elements. Their will to survive, despite all odds, is beyond inspirational.

Having recently finished “Let Us Descend" by Jesmyn Ward, I am happy to have had the chance for the Advanced Reader’s Edition e-copy; thank you NetGalley and Scribner!

The beautiful collage bee art on the cover, and wanting to finally read a story by Ms. Ward drew me to choose this book. It was written in a way that brought me along as a witness to the vivid and historic stories of proud royal heritage, and then through the darkness and brutal reality of slavery. Through all the storms on their journey, the spirit of this family of women remained strong and eternally connected.

Let Us Descend tells the heartbreaking story of Annis, a young, enslaved woman who is sold by her white father. Annis is an unforgettable character whose journey illuminates the many evils of slavery while also revealing how deeply rooted our love for one another can be. Ward uses a lot of magical realism throughout this novel, and there were scenes when it didn't work for me and left me unsure of what was happening. Despite that, Let Us Descend is a powerful book I'm sure will become a classic.