Further thoughts on the supernatural and other aspects of Ward's Sing, Unburied, Sing

Jesmyn Ward continues her fine writing as she moves Sing, Unburied, Sing closer to its conclusion; the five travelers reach their family home in southern Mississippi, after their arduous trek from the prison, where Michael was released. They stop at Michael's family's house where they hope (against hope) to be welcomed: M's father has never recognized his relationship w/ Leonie, who is black, and has never met their two children (Jojo and Kayla). When they show up unannounced M's mother is slightly conciliatory - it's evident that she and her husband had talked about someday recognizing their grandchildren - but his father stands his ground, threatens them all in vile, racist terms, and engages in a fistfight w/ Michael, who eventually retreats. I hope that Michael's father will appear again and that his character will show or develop some moral complexity; right now, he's just a caricature, an easy target for our wrath. They had on to Leonie's family, where they all had been living during and previous to M's imprisonment (it's not clear, or at least I don't remember, why he was imprisoned, and it seems a very long time to be living w/ her family, as Jojo is now 13 years old). Michael before imprisonment had worked on a BP oil rig in the Gulf, and unsurprisingly he's traumatized by the rig explosion that killed a # of his co-workers and has poisoned the Gulf; he expresses some not really credible sorrow for the dolphins that we killed and for the spoiled fisheries. Leonie's family welcomes the travelers home, but much of the home life concerns the children's g-mother, who is on her deathbed. I have to say that at this point in the novel, about 3/4 through, I could do w/ less of the ghost voice of Richie, who had been imprisoned years ago along w/ the grandfather and is hanging around the family to learn how the g-father stood up for him in prison. Though Ward is a good enough writer to carry off this heavy narrative baggage, I'm feeling toyed w/ a little bit: why can't Pop tell his own story? Why do we really need this device of a ghost (who appears to JoJo only)? Each writer present the story in her or his own way, but the debt here seems heavy, to Morrison and Garcia Marquez I would say. Ward would have done better to stay closer to the Faulkner model - a story told by several near-omniscient narrators. That said, there's still so much in this story, enough to hold anyone's interest and attention right through to the end