1 1

Of Women and Salt Spiral-Bound | 2022-01-04

Gabriela Garcia

★★★☆☆+ from 10,001 to 50,000 ratings

$18.59 - Free Shipping
A sweeping, masterful debut about a daughter's fateful choice, a mother motivated by her own past, and a family legacy that begins in Cuba before either of them were born

In present-day Miami, Jeanette is battling addiction. Daughter of Carmen, a Cuban immigrant, she is determined to learn more about her family history from her reticent mother and makes the snap decision to take in the daughter of a neighbor detained by ICE. Carmen, still wrestling with the trauma of displacement, must process her difficult relationship with her own mother while trying to raise a wayward Jeanette. Steadfast in her quest for understanding, Jeanette travels to Cuba to see her grandmother and reckon with secrets from the past destined to erupt.

From 19th-century cigar factories to present-day detention centers, from Cuba to Mexico, Of Women and Salt is a kaleidoscopic portrait of betrayals--personal and political, self-inflicted and those done by others--that have shaped the lives of these extraordinary women. A haunting meditation on the choices of mothers, the legacy of the memories they carry, and the tenacity of women who choose to tell their stories despite those who wish to silence them, this is more than a diaspora story; it is a story of America's most tangled, honest, human roots.

Publisher: Macmillan
Original Binding: Trade Paperback
Pages: 224 pages
ISBN-10: 1250776708
Item Weight: 0.4 lbs
Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.6 x 8.3 inches
Customer Reviews: 3 out of 5 stars 10,001 to 50,000 ratings
"Gabriela Garcia captures the lives of Cuban women in a world to which they refuse to surrender and she does so with precision and generosity and beauty." -- Roxane Gay, bestselling author of Hunger and Bad Feminist

"Of Women and Salt is a fierce and powerful debut. Garcia wields narrative power, cultivating true and profound work on migration, legacy, and survival." -- Terese Marie Mailhot, bestselling author of Heart Berries

"Garcia's vivid details, visceral prose and strong willful women negotiating how to survive in this world are easy to fall for." -- Angie Cruz, author of Dominicana

"[A] beautifully evocative first novel." -- The New York Times Book Review

"This riveting account will please readers of sweeping multigenerational stories." -- Publishers Weekly

"I love the way Garcia is able to combine trauma and lyricism, briars and roses, in the lives of the complex, passionate women at the center of this beautiful debut." -- Miranda Cowley Heller, author of The Paper Palace

"Of Women and Salt reads like poetry." -- Vogue

"Highly anticipated." -- Elle

"A mesmerizing patchwork of determination, courage, and survival." -- The Washington Post

"From the perspectives of several generations of Cuban women, this remarkable debut shines a brilliant light on the broken immigration system and legacy of trauma for the people who endure it." -- Ms. Magazine

"Following three generations of Cuban women from Mexico to Miami, Gabriela Garcia's debut novel promises to be a sweeping tour de force about addiction, displacement, and the legacy of trauma." -- Harper's Bazaar

"Phenomenal . . . readers won't want to put [it] down." -- BUST

"This gripping, accomplished debut follows generations of Cuban women, from María Isabel, rolling cigars as she listens to the words of Victor Hugo and men die around her, to Jeanette, struggling with addiction in Miami, and trying to find a place in the world that feels real." -- Lit Hub

"The debut that's had publishing buzzing all winter long meditates on the way immigration shapes the lives of Latinx women." -- Entertainment Weekly

"I love a sweeping, ambitious debut, and this novel about a woman's family, with examinations of contemporary immigration and trauma and motherhood, sounds just incredible." -- Emma Straub,
New York Times bestselling author of The Vacationers and All Adults Here

Gabriela Garcia is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer's Award and a Steinbeck Fellowship from San Jose State University. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Best American Poetry, Tin House, Zyzzyva, Iowa Review, and elsewhere. She received an MFA in fiction from Purdue and lives in the Bay Area. Of Women and Salt is her first novel.