Thoughts on the unsympathetic characters in Sing, Unburied, Sing

Jesmyn Ward will never be accused of sentimentality regarding her characters; one of the strengths of her novel Sing, Unburied, Sing is her ability to portray her main characters as malicious and self-centered yet, amazingly, keeping us engaged with their fate and sympathetic about their sufferings. One of the main characters, Leonie, in the 2nd "movement" of the novel (about which see yesterday's post), travels north through Mississippi to greet her boyfriend (and father of her two children) on his release from Parchman prison. En route she does some really stupid things, starting with stopping by a meth dealer's and procuring some crystal meth or, on a less grand scale, more or less entrusting her infant (maybe 2 or 3 years old?) daughter, Kayla, to the care and attention of her young (maybe 10 or 12?) son, Jojo, even as the child gets increasingly feverish and nauseated; in fact, she concocts a ridiculous brew of berry tea (her mother, is a skilled herbalist from Leonie did not pick up the knowledge) - fortunately, Jojo surmises that the brew might kill Kayla and forces her to vomit up the mess. These are just some examples, and normally I would have no sympathy for these characters, but Ward is so clear and precise about depicting the poverty and racism of their home and environment and her sketching in of a character is so effective that we are rooting for these guys even though we see their irresponsibility. One character about whom I have no sympathy is the lawyer who got Michael's release from prison and who puts up Leonie et al en route to Parchman - even providing her with a packet of drugs - some favor, she's lucky the Rx didn't land Michael right back in prison, following a traffic stop. Thanks, buddy, real nice way to work w/ your clients. (And who paid the lawyer? We suspect it must be Michael's father.) On the long drive home from the prison Jojo imagines he sees and hears, or maybe within the magic-realist scope of this novel he does see and hear, the ghost of Richie, a young man who'd been imprisoned years ago w/ his grandfather and tells the story of Pop's efforts to save Richie from punishment and abuse. I really don't know why Pop couldn't tell this story and Ward had to resort to use of a ghost to do so, but that mysterical thread (movement 3) seems to be important to her as a writer so, well, it's her novel.