Salvage the Bones

The absent mother of the Batiste children is a heavy presence in the novel and Esch carries her in her thoughts continually, recalling her behavior as a guide for her own. She also looks to China for a definition of “motherhood”, as she thinks about her own mothering. There are chauvinistic attitudes in the story that associate motherhood with weakness, but China demonstrates the opposite reality with her ability to fight and overpower a large male dog. Skeetah, using China as an example, also promotes a more respectful view of motherhood: “‘that’s power…To give life…is to know what’s worth fighting for’” (96). The power of the mother is also described in reference to the hurricane. While Claude makes a disparaging comment that the hurricane is “the worst, she’s a woman” (124), Esch describes Hurricane Katrina as the “murderous mother who cut us to the bone but left us alive, left us naked and bewildered as wrinkled newborn babies…She left us to learn to crawl. She left us to salvage. Katrina is the mother we will remember…” (255). Ultimately, the author stresses the point that motherhood is not to be seen as a weakness, but as a formidable force of nature that is more powerful than humankind can understand.