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The Salt Roads

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The Salt Roads

By: Nalo Hopkinson
Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
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About this listen

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 African American Fantasy Fiction Historical Fiction Magical Realism Science Fiction Time Travel World Literature Caribbean

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Deep mystical story, loved it!

Bahni did a wonderful job narrating this book.
The story itself was also very enjoyable.

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Brown herstory

I admit that while amazing written and beautifully narrated I almost stopped listening because salt roads is in parts so heart breaking. I am so glad I continued. Hopkinson weaves so many stories together with a touch a mysticism and a lot of courage. She does not shy away from hard topics and successfully creates authentic characters based on historical events.

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