Fire Shut Up in My Bones

The New York Times columnist recounts growing up in rural Louisiana in this “brave and powerful memoir” of poverty, abuse, sexuality, and perseverance ( Publishers Weekly ). Charles M. Blow’s mother was a fiercely driven woman with five sons, brass knuckles in her glove box, and a job plucking poultry at a factory near their segregated Louisiana town, where slavery's legacy felt close. When her philandering husband finally pushed her over the edge, she fired a pistol at his fleeing back, missing