Of Women and Salt​
Gabriela Garcia

Photo by Andria Lo

​Of Women and Salt by Gabriela Garcia is a multigenerational story that traces the ways women learn to resist power structures and endure suffering with a ferocity born of love and lack of choices. In the beginning, there is María Isabel, a woman whose survival requires learning to read in secret and working as the only woman rolling cigars in a factory. In the midst of the first Cuban revolution in the 1860’s, María Isabel becomes the matriarch of a long line of courageous women navigating an unjust world. Jeanette, five generations later, is at the other end of two revolutions and a diaspora that led part of the family to Miami.

Jeanette knows little of her family’s history and carries on a tradition of silence surrounding the circumstances that shaped her. Even as she fails to penetrate her mother’s carefully put together, stoic façade and emotional barriers, Jeanette is unable to unearth her own haunted past to reconnect with her mother. Jeanette struggles endlessly to break free from her addiction and to find a sense of self outside of the relationship that fostered her addiction, and she hopes that Cuba may hold the pieces she’s been missing. Meanwhile, Jeanette’s life intersects with a young undocumented girl, Ana, and her mother, Gloria. As refugees from El Salvador, Ana and Gloria are forced into a dehumanizing immigration system as they pursue a safe place to call home.

Garcia’s characters are like the heroes of so many families—mothers and guardians who make impossible choices and spend a lifetime making peace with them. Over the span of 150 years, these families witness revolutionary political changes and cope with their inherited traumas. This extensive timeline is evidence of a tendency for patterns, both good and bad, to persist no matter how much one tries to live in isolation from the past. Irrespective of time and place, Of Women and Salt speaks to the universal human desires to survive and to belong.

Of Women and Salt is Gabriela Garcia’s debut novel. She received her M.F.A. in fiction from Purdue University, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, and a Steinbeck Fellowship from San Jose State University. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Best American Poetry, Tin House, Zyzzyva, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere.

Of Women and Salt is a publication by Flatiron Books. Click here to purchase.
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Reviewed by
Samantha Olvera
​​8/26/2021

Samantha Olvera is a freelance writer, book reviewer, and avid reader of diverse literature. She currently resides in Costa Rica, where she farms tropical fruits and teaches about sustainability. She is passionate about intersectional feminism, food systems and regenerative agriculture, and lifting up underrepresented voices. 

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