A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK
A sweeping, masterful
debut about a daughter's fateful choice, a mother motivated by her own
past, and a family legacy that begins in Cuba before either of them were
born
In present-day Miami, Jeanette is battling addiction.
Daughter of Carmen, a Cuban immigrant, she is determined to learn more
about her family history from her reticent mother and makes the snap
decision to take in the daughter of a neighbor detained by ICE. Carmen,
still wrestling with the trauma of displacement, must process her
difficult relationship with her own mother while trying to raise a
wayward Jeanette. Steadfast in her quest for understanding, Jeanette
travels to Cuba to see her grandmother and reckon with secrets from the
past destined to erupt.
From 19th-century cigar factories to present-day detention centers, from Cuba to Mexico, Gabriela Garcia's Of Women and Salt
is a kaleidoscopic portrait of betrayals―personal and political,
self-inflicted and those done by others―that have shaped the lives of
these extraordinary women. A haunting meditation on the choices of
mothers, the legacy of the memories they carry, and the tenacity of
women who choose to tell their stories despite those who wish to silence
them, this is more than a diaspora story; it is a story of America’s
most tangled, honest, human roots.