The Salt Roads

De: Nalo Hopkinson

Narrado por: Bahni Turpin

In 1804, shortly before the Caribbean island of Saint Domingue is renamed Haiti, a group of women gather to bury a stillborn baby. Led by a lesbian healer and midwife named Mer, the women's lamentations inadvertently release the dead infant's "unused vitality" to draw Ezili - the Afro-Caribbean goddess of sexual desire and love - into the physical world.

As Ezili explores her newfound powers, she travels across time and space to inhabit the midwife's body - as well as those of Jeanne, a mixed-race dancer and the mistress of Charles Baudelaire living in 1880s Paris, and Meritet, an enslaved Greek-Nubian prostitute in ancient Alexandria.

Bound together by Ezili and "the salt road" of their sweat, blood, and tears, the three women struggle against a hostile world, unaware of the goddess's presence in their lives. Despite her magic, Mer suffers as a slave on a sugar plantation until Ezili plants the seeds of uprising in her mind. Jeanne slowly succumbs to the ravages of age and syphilis when her lover is unable to escape his mother's control. And Meritet, inspired by Ezili, flees her enslavement and makes a pilgrimage to Egypt, where she becomes known as Saint Mary.

©2003 Nalo Hopkinson (P)2018 Tantor

confusing

bounced around from story to story too much. I got really bored toward the end and couldn't wait for it to be over.

Didn't want it to end!

I finished the book a week ago and cannot get the voices of the characters out of my head! The narration is exquisite! And each character a jewel. It started off a bit difficult with the bouncing around between the different times and storylines told in 1st person, but once my brain figured out what the author was doing, I was hooked. And this is we're the narration was just so wonderful! Between the author's descriptions and the narrators different voices, listening was like floating away.

And I loved the ending! Just finished another book and hated the ending because everything was left undone. You could tell that it's a hopefull book one.

The Salt Roads is complete. I was left wanting to know more, to find out what happens next, but nothing was left undone. I was surprised at how quickly, effortlessly, and eloquently the author ended the book. How it all came together and the picture it left behind of these women, these African women...

I have no connection to thier story's, other than a belief that we all come from one place, and that all of our humanities are intertwined and same. The humanity displayed in this novel left my soul smiling. I think I'll go and listen to it again

The historic figures given a voice

I loved the meaning of salt with the God's and learning about the ppl of Haiti and French poets and Dusky Mary of Egypt

Salt Roads

I was disappointed in this story. The narration was excellent. I love this particular narrator's beautiful voice and inflections, outstanding! But the story itself was difficult to follow and left me wondering what she was really trying to say. I often struggled to get through, and then I'd think okay I got it....but not really.

Not sure how to feel

I really struggled to finish this book. I wanted to love it but the story changes just wouldn't let me. I wanted more depth and more of each story. maybe if it would have been a book of short stories, I would have liked it more.