Of Women and Salt

Of Women and Salt (2021) is the first novel by Gabriela Garcia. A work of literary fiction, it explores themes of family, patriarchy, feminism, race, colonialism, and immigration. The story touches several generations, from 1866 to 2019, but takes place primarily in 21st-century Miami and Cuba.

Plot Summary

Rather than presenting events chronologically, Of Women and Salt jumps backward and forward in time, and the point of view changes with each chapter. This summary places the events in chronological order, noting the corresponding chapters.

The novel opens with the character of María Isabel in Camagüey, Cuba, in 1866 (Chapter 1, “Dance Not Beyond the Distant Mountain”). María is a cigar roller—traditionally a man’s job—at a small factory; she lives with her mother, who works in the fields. Her story is set against a backdrop of political unrest: Many Cubans are beginning to agitate for independence from Spain, and the Spanish suppression of the revolution is getting violent. María catches the eye of the factory lector, Antonio; after her mother passes away, they begin dating and eventually marry. When the Spanish government orders the factory to fire Antonio from his job to suppress revolutionary speech, María follows, and they start holding reading groups with other revolutionaries; however, Antonio asks María to stop attending the meetings once she becomes pregnant. As she’s giving birth to their daughter, the Spanish troops find the reading group and execute Antonio.

María’s great-granddaughter, Dolores, lives in Camagüey with her husband, Daniel, and their two small daughters, Carmen and Elena (Chapter 10, “That Bombs Would Rain”). It’s 1959, and the Cuban Revolution is raging in the background; unbeknownst to them, the revolutionaries will soon succeed in running Batista out of Cuba. Daniel listens to the rebel radio every night; Dolores sympathizes with the revolution but fears for her family’s safety. However, Daniel is a violent man, and when she expresses her fears, he beats her and accuses her of supporting Batista. A brief time later, he goes to the mountains to join in the fight; when he returns, he becomes even more violent toward Dolores, nearly killing her when he finds that she’s stashed away money in preparation to leave. When he returns to the fight, she hopes that he’ll be killed and begins to plan a life on her own. He returns, however, and she realizes that he’ll never let her leave. That night, she gets him drunk and murders him but tells everyone that he died in the fighting. However, she doesn’t know that her daughter Carmen watched her burn his body. Carmen flees to the US the first chance she gets.

In 2002, Jeanette, Carmen’s teenage daughter, is out one Saturday night with her friend Sasha (Chapter 4, “Harder Girl”). They’re trying to buy cigarettes when an older man invites them to a foam party; Sasha declines, but Jeanette goes with him because she wants to feel more like the popular, cool girls in her school. At the party, he plies her with strong drinks, and they dance for a while. He then gets her to try cocaine, and they dance well into the night. After they leave, he takes her to the water and tries to rape her; however, Jeanette notices a dead body in the water, which stops him, and they both run away.

Several years later, Jeanette is living away from her parents and working in a department store; she had an office job but was fired after failing a drug test, and her mother forced her to go to rehab (Chapter 11, “Other Girl”). Sometime between the chapter “Harder Girl” and this one, her father’s drunken attention advanced to molestation, so Jeanette refuses to go home; however, Carmen is unaware of the abuse and continually tries to maintain a relationship with Jeanette and get her to come back home to visit. Jeanette is living with Mario, whom she met in rehab; the two think that they’re being careful about getting high but eventually try Oxy, and a flash-forward in the narrative reveals that this leads them to heroin and severe addiction.

After years of addiction, Mario hits her, and they break up and attempt sobriety again. In 2014, she’s back on her own when she sees immigration officers pick up her neighbor Gloria; later that night, the neighbor’s daughter, Ana, returns home, and Jeanette takes her in (Chapter 2, “Everything Is Holding You Now”). Carmen insists that Jeanette needs to hand Ana over to the police; Jeanette tries to find another solution but eventually turns Ana in. Meanwhile, in Texas, Ana’s mother Gloria is in a family detention center (Chapter 3, “An Encyclopedia of Birds”). She has no legal assistance and is unable to understand the documents she’s asked to read and sign. She learns that Ana’s on the way to join her, and an agent convinces her to agree to expedited deportation, as she thinks it’ll be best for Ana. When they’re deported, however, the authorities don’t take them to their home country of El Salvador but instead drop them off in Mexico and tell them to find their own way home (Chapter 5, “Find Your Way Home”). Gloria decides that staying in Mexico is safer. She calls a relative and secures work as a housekeeper in Irapuato.

In 2015, Jeanette travels to Cuba to meet her Cuban relatives; Carmen never allowed her to have contact with them, especially Dolores (Chapter 8, “They Like the Grimy”; Chapter 9, “People Like That”). She meets her cousin Maydelis and spends some time with her in Havana; when a German tourist offers to take them to the beach, they accept, and the three go on a road trip. However, the car breaks down, and the German insists that the locals must have broken it to try to steal from them. He grows increasingly paranoid and agitated, and Jeanette and Maydelis decide to ditch him and instead get a ride from one of the locals, Reinaldo—first to the beach and then to Camagüey to visit Jeanette’s grandmother, Dolores. They spend a week with Dolores. While there, Jeanette notices two rare, old books—Les Misérables and Cecilia Valdés, which Antonio had given to María Isabel—and tries to steal one to pawn, as her mother no longer supports her. Jeanette thinks that Dolores will never notice the missing book, but she does, and when she begins accusing her Black neighbor, Jeanette sneaks the book back onto the bookshelf. Maydelis realizes what she did, and their remaining interactions are tense.

The following year (2016), after Jeanette returns to the US, Carmen invites her to Thanksgiving dinner for the first time in several years since Jeanette is now sober (Chapter 6, “Prey”). While Carmen prepares for the party, she hears a low growling from a neighbor’s house and sees spots of blood on the driveway. When Jeanette arrives, she surprises Carmen by telling her that Mario is joining them; this puts Carmen on edge, and she struggles to focus on her guests. Moreover, she worries that Mario may get Jeanette back into unhealthy habits. At one point, she sees him with some pills and accuses him of being back on drugs, only to learn that the bottle is an antacid prescription. Jeanette and Mario leave early. Carmen sneaks into her neighbor’s house to investigate the growling. She finds a Florida panther in a cage but leaves and chooses not to say anything about it. A few years later, the panther escapes the cage and mauls her neighbor.

In 2018, Ana is living in Irapuato with Gloria, who is working for a wealthy Mexican man and his US-born, white wife, Nancy (Chapter 7, “Privilegio”). Gloria develops cancer, and by the time the doctors catch it, it’s too far along. After Gloria passes away, Ana makes her way back to the US, sneaking across the border with a group of migrants (Chapter 12, “More Than We Think”). Once across, she takes a train to Miami and goes to her old neighborhood, hoping to find Jeanette. However, Carmen answers the door and informs her that Jeanette passed away from a drug overdose. When Carmen realizes who Ana is, though, she invites her in and says that she can stay for as long as she needs to. Carmen eventually takes Ana back to Coral Gables and raises her as her own.