Hillary Jordan is the author of the novel Mudbound, published by Algonquin Books in March 2008. Mudbound was the 2008 NAIBA (New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association) Fiction Book of the Year. It won a 2009 Alex Award from the American Library Association as well as the 2006 Bellwether Prize for fiction, founded by author Barbara Kingsolver and awarded biennially to an unpublished work of fiction that addresses issues of social justice. Hillary grew up in Dallas, Texas and Muskogee, Oklahoma and now lives in New York's Hudson Valley. She received a BA from Wellesley College and an MFA from Columbia University. She spent 15 years as an advertising copywriter before starting to write fiction.. She is currently working on her second novel, Red.
Mudbound is a story of betrayal, murder and forbidden love set in on a cotton farm in the Mississippi Delta in 1946, during the height of the Jim Crow era. The story is told in alternating first-person narratives by the members of two families: the McAllans, the white family that owns the farm; and the Jacksons, a black family that works for the McAllans as share tenants. When two sons, Jamie McAllan and Ronsel Jackson, return from fighting World War II, the unlikely friendship of these brothers-in-arms sets in motion a harrowing chain of events that test the faith and courage of both families. As they strive for love and honor in a brutal time and place, they become players in a tragedy on the grandest scale and find redemption where they least expect it.
Awards
Additional honors for Mudbound: a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick, a Borders Original Voices selection, a Book Sense pick, one of twelve New Voices for 2008 chosen by Waterstone's UK, a Richard & Judy New Writers Book Of The Month, and one of IndieNext's top ten reading group suggestions for 2009.