Description
Amazon.com Review
An Amazon Best Book of April 2021: From Cuba to Miami, Gabriela Garcia presents a sweeping—but swift—portrait of three generations of Cuban women, exploring themes of trauma, motherhood, addiction, love, and, immigration. Each character is rendered with such care that it’s impossible not to feel the yearning of possibility that one generation bestows upon the next as well as the underbelly of regret and anger they feel about their sacrifice. Garcia’s novel gets at the very core of our humanity—the wounds we’ve endured (whether from oppressive governments, love, or hate) and how they’re passed on, but also the fiery determination that lives in each of us. Beautifully written, Of Women and Salt expresses the hope and the heartbreak of moving on. —Al Woodworth, Amazon Book Review
Product Description
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
THE WASHINGTON POST NOTABLE BOOK OF 2021
A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK
WINNER of the Isabel Allende Most Inspirational Fiction Award - International Latino Book Awards • WINNER of
Best Literary Fiction - She Reads Best of 2021 Awards • FINALIST for the 2022 Southern Book Prize • LONGLISTED for Crook’s Corner Book Prize • NOMINEE for 2021 Goodreads Choice Award in Debut Novel and Historical Fiction
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.
Review
Named a Best Book of the Year:
Cosmopolitan • The Boston Globe • Real Simple • Marie Claire • Reader’s Digest • Good Housekeeping • Woman’s Day • She Reads • Austin Public Library • Harper’s Bazaar
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, PopSugar, TIME Magazine, and more!)
Praise for Of Women and Salt
“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
"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." - The New York Times
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