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, miss...