Strong women and the nuanced complexities of mother-daughter relationships that reverberate through generations are at the heart of Gabriela Garcia's debut novel. A Washington Post Notable Book of 2021, Good Morning America Book Club Pick and winner of the Isabel Allende Most Inspirational Fiction Award, Of Women and Salt spans 19th- and 20th-century Cuba into present-day Miami, Texas and Mexico. It captures five women's often fraught emotional connections to each other, their deepest secrets and their unresolved traumas.
Cuba, 1866: María Isabel is the only female employee at a cigar workshop in Camagüey. To break up the tedium of rolling cigars, Antonio reads from Victor Hugo's newest work, Les Misérables. One day, a letter arrives from Hugo himself, pledging to "speak up for Cuba as I spoke up for Crete," as conditions in Cuba begin to reflect the country's conflicts. With Antonio's help, María Isabel begins to understand the power of words and stories, and how books can provide comfort and strength during times of struggle. She accepts Antonio's offer to teach her to read and write, along with his marriage proposal.
Miami, 2014: Jeanette, the great-great-granddaughter of María Isabel, battles drug addiction, struggling to break free of the destructive influences of her past mistakes and her mother Carmen's stoic, controlling nature. The disappearance of Jeanette's El Salvadoran neighbor and her young daughter awakens her desire to visit Camagüey, and the 80-year-old grandmother she's never met. "I want to know who I am," Jeanette tells Carmen, "so I need to know who you've been."
Garcia, the daughter of Cuban and Mexican immigrants, portrays each of her characters' interconnected stories with a deeply personal understanding of the immigration experience as something that shapes a person's self-identity and sense of survival--if not for oneself, for one's children. --Melissa Firman