The Salt Roads, like most good fiction, asks many questions:

--What happens to the gods when their people either turn away or are torn away from them?

--Where are the women in history?

--What does it mean to say we are connected to one another?

Also like most good fiction, there are no concrete answers to these questions, but they are explored in a way that let me think deeply about them, without ever feeling like I was reading AN IMPORTANT BOOK.

The story is about three women in three different time periods (19th century Haiti, 18th century Paris and 3rd century Egypt) who are trying to find a way to live in societies that aren't theirs. The women are linked by a divine spirit or god or energy or something that is trying to understand itself and them and the world.

The book is written like a soup, with bits and pieces of the various stories overlapping, and blending and swirling around in unexpected ways. At first this made me uncomfortable, but once I let go of my expectation that this was a normal book, I enjoyed the unexpected freshness of the structure.

The book reminded me of Maryse Conde's I Tituba which itself reminded me of the Handmaid's Tale. I highly recommend it.