Of Women And Salt

Description

â€˜Extraordinary . . . stunningâ€™ â€“ Elizabeth Macneal, author of The Doll Factory

â€˜Vivid details, visceral prose and strong willful womenâ€™ â€“ Angie Cruz, author of Dominicana

Five generations of women, linked by blood and circumstance, by the secrets they share, and by a single book passed down through a family, with an affirmation scrawled in its margins: We are force. We are more than we think we are.

1866, Cuba: MarÃa Isabel is the only woman employed at a cigar factory, where each day the workers find strength in daily readings of Victor Hugo. But these are dangerous political times, and as MarÃa begins to see marriage and motherhood as her only options, the sounds of war are approaching.

1959, Cuba: Dolores watches her husband make for the mountains in answer to Fidel Castroâ€™s call to arms. What Dolores knows, though, is that to survive, she must win her own war, and commit an act of violence that threatens to destroy her daughter Carmenâ€™s world.

2016, Miami: Carmen, still wrestling with the trauma of displacement, is shocked when her daughter Jeanette announces her plans to travel to Cuba to see her grandmother Dolores. In the walls of her crumbling home lies a secret, one that will link Jeanette to her past, and to this fearless line of women.

From nineteenth-century cigar factories to present-day detention centres, from Cuba to the United States to Mexico, Gabriela Garciaâ€™s Of Women and Salt follows Latina women of fierce pride, bound by the stories passed between them. It is a haunting meditation on the choices of mothers and the tenacity of women who choose to tell their truth despite those who wish to silence them.

About the Author

Gabriela Garcia is a fiction writer, poet, and journalist. After completing an MFA in fiction from Purdue, she received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writerâ€™s Award and served as the 2018 writer-in-residence for Sarabande Books. Her work has been selected for publication in Best American Poetry 2019. She is the daughter of immigrants from Mexico and Cuba and grew up in Miami.