OF WOMEN AND SALT
A Novel
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.
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, Gabriela Garcia’s 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.
- Flatiron Books
- Hardcover
- March 2021
- 224 Pages
- 9781250776686
Buy the Book
$26.99
About Gabriela Garcia
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.
Praise
Selected as Indie Next Great Reads for April
Selected as June Book of the Month for Roxane Gay’s Audacious Book Club
A Most Anticipated Book (Bustle, Buzzfeed, E! News, Entertainment Weekly, Good Morning America, Goodreads, Harper’s Bazaar, New York Times, O Magazine, Lit Hub, Refinery29, Vogue India, Reader’s Digest, and more!)
“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 of 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
“In this debut novel, the daughter of a Cuban immigrant is haunted by the desire to learn more about her history, setting in motion a multigenerational family story that leaps across the Americas.” – New York Times
“This riveting account will please readers of sweeping multigenerational stories.” – Publishers Weekly
“Garcia’s debut novel is a…stunningly accomplished first novel is both epic and intimate.” – O Magazine
“At the heart of Of Women and Salt are the sacrifices made by mothers so their daughters can have different lives—perhaps better ones. But daughters may make choices based on their own wishes and needs, and this possibility is ever poised to pierce a mother’s heart. In this way, the novel is quietly heartbreaking. As Garcia writes, ‘Even the best mothers in the world can’t always save their daughters.'” – BookPage, starred review