Views on the use of the supernatural in Sing, Unburied, Sing

Sparsely attended book group last night (4 participants in discussion), and much of discussion centered on degree of acceptance of the appearance of ghosts, visions, and symbols in final chapters of the novel, Jesmyn Ward's Sing, Unburied, Sing. As noted in previous posts, I think resorting to the supernatural to tie the threads of the narrative was a mistake: a novel, and this novel in particular, is about people and their relationships to one another. I had no interest in Richie's fate as a ghost (it seems that at the end, though he at last learns why Pap had shot him to death - to spare him a brutal execution by torture - his soul cannot be at peace until he joins the voices of hundreds of thousands of other victims of abuse, who are depicted to the extent that they are at all as spirits hovering in the trees); I do have interest in Richie the character. JW apparently said that she wanted to include in her novel child victims of abuse at the Parchman prison, and the "only" way she could do so was to bring one back as a ghost. Well, there are many other ways she could have done so and this was her choice. Admittedly, it's important to the novel that most of the characters abide in a culture that has much faith in spiritualism, so, yes, the use of the supernatural as a plot device fits w/ the culture that JW is depicting - but be that as it may, my interest in the novel waned rather than sharpened in the final chapters. LR expressed similar views, while M and JoRi were more willing than I to accept the novel as a whole and to try to discern JW's message and intent in the final chapters. On another note, I surmised that if JW were to write the novel today she would have to treat the scene w/ the state trooper in a completely different manner. Within the narrative as it stands this highway stop is meant to be a turning point for Jojo, who is made to kneel on the ground, handcuffed; from this experience follows a distrust of authority. But played against the many stories in the media over the past 2 years of black people shot to death in confrontations w/ the police, this arrest looks tame and benevolent: The cop had good reason to make the stop, the characters were in fact carrying drugs, they were on their way home from Parchman prison no less (which someone blurts to the officer) - so all told it's amazing that he let them go on their way. I didn't anticipate that, and I ended up feeling he was a pretty good guy, which I don't think was JW's intent. Were she writing today, I think she would have made the outcome of that highway stop far more dire.