Chicago, IL: Agate Publishing (2008)

First Edition. Signed.

Paperback Original. Fine with french flaps. First novel.

Joshua and Christophe are twins, raised by a blind grandmother and a large extended family in a rural town on Mississippi's Gulf Coast. They've just finished high school and need to find jobs, but in a failing post-Katrina economy, it's not easy. Joshua gets work on the docks, but Christophe's not so lucky.

Desperate to alleviate the family's poverty, he starts to sell drugs. He can hide it from his grandmother but not his twin, and the two grow increasingly estranged. Christophe's downward spiral is accelerated first by crack, then by the reappearance of the twins' parents: Cille, who abandoned them, and Sandman, a creepy, predatory addict. Sandman taunts Christophe, eventually provoking a shocking confrontation that will ultimately damn or save both twins.

Ward inhabits these characters, and this world -- black Creole, poor, and drug-riddled, yet shored by family and community-- to a rare degree, without a trace of irony or distance.