Through Esch and China’s twinned stories-and indeed through the invocation of Medea-Ward suggests that though one of the primary duties of motherhood is to protect one’s offspring from the violence of the world, there is often a violence inherent in the act of mothering as well. Running like an undercurrent through the novel is Esch’s obsession with the ancient Greek myth of Medea, who famously killed her two children in order to wound her husband, Jason.
As the novel progresses, Ward tracks China’s violent first few days of motherhood and shows Esch adjusting to her changing body and struggling to keep the secret of her pregnancy. At the start of the novel, China is giving birth to her first litter shortly thereafter, at the end of the second chapter, Esch reveals that watching China give birth has made her realize that “something’s wrong”: she, too, is pregnant, with the child of a local boy named Manny who will not return the feelings of love she has for him. At the heart of Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones are two very different but parallel stories of new motherhood: that of the central protagonist, Esch, and that of China, Esch’s brother Skeetah’s prize fighting dog.
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