The Salt Roads
by Nalo Hopkinson

List Price: $14.95
Pages: 416
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 0446677132
Publisher: Warner Books

A landmark work by a brilliant young author, The Salt Roads transports readers across centuries and civilizations as it fearlessly explores the relationships women have with their lovers, their people, and the divine. Jeanne Duval, the ginger-colored entertainer, struggles with her lover poet Charles Baudelaire...Mer, plantation slave and doctor, both hungers for and dreads liberation...and Thais, a dark-skinned beauty from Alexandria, is impelled to seek a glorious revelation-as Ezili, a being born of hope, unites them all. Interweaving acts of brutality with passionate unions of spirit and flesh, this is a narrative that shocks, entertains, and dazzles-from an award-winning writer who dares to redefine the art of storytelling.

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1. Makandal and Mer each have a different way of dealing with the oppression that their people face. They represent different voices in a larger argument about how best to take action to liberate a group of people from domination. How would you define the differences in their beliefs? What do you think is the best course of action?

2. Near the end of the novel, Jeanne Duval makes herself appear more haggard, aged, and decrepit than she is when she walks past her old lover Nadar. Why do you think she does this?

3. From Jeanne Duval's relationship with Baudelaire to Mer's relationship with Tipingee to Meritet's relationship with Judah, there are many kinds of love and friendship. How many types of significant relationships can you identify in the novel? What is the novel's ultimate view of love between men and women? Between women and women? What place does sex hold in the various relationships in this novel?

4. The Salt Roads uses the fantastical elements throughout the story: Makandal's shape-changing; Mer's visitation from Ezili; Meritet's super-real sensory abilities in the desert. What purpose do you feel it serves in a story to have a plot device, element, artifact, or image that isn't literally true or real? Do you see The Salt Roads as a "fantasy" novel?

5. Deities or lwas play a key role in this novel. How do they impact the events of this novel? How do they affect the lives of the individual people?

6. One reviewer said, "The essential beauty of The Salt Roads: history and folklore work together to provide a destiny for its characters, yet personal choice remains." How much choice do the characters of the novel have? How do their choices affect them?

7. The author incorporates real people and events from history in her novel (e.g., Charles Baudelaire, Jeanne Duval, Makandal and the revolution in Haiti), but imagines a possible scenario for how those people lived and how those events took place. How does the presence of these historical elements affect your reading of the novel?

8. Do you consider yourself the audience for this novel? Why or why not? Does being a member of the cultural group which most dominates a novel necessarily make a person more likely to appreciate or "get" that book?

9. Salt, an essential mineral for life, appears in this novel in many ways and has many features. Can you name how many times it is discussed? What meaning does it have? And what value-is it good or bad?

10. Fiction is about the problems and challenges that people face in their lives. Which characters in the novel have the most to lose? Which have the most to gain? How does the impact of slavery affect the white characters as well as the black characters? The mixed-race characters? How do class and money interact with the characters' racial and cultural backgrounds?

11. Fiction can use symbols and metaphors to link events together in a meaningful way. What are the most important symbols in the novel? What ideas and images stand out the strongest to you? What statements do you think they make? How many of them do you think were intentional on the author's part? Is it possible for authors to control how their work is understood? Is it desirable?

12. Much of what the author describes in this book involves suffering, but there were also many descriptions of triumph. What is the greatest tragedy of this novel? What is the greatest victory? What was your emotional response to this book? Did you find it depressing? Or uplifting?

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"A book of wonder, courage, and magic...an electrifying bravura performance by one of our most important writers."

—Junot Díaz, author of Drown

"Sexy, disturbing, touching, wildly comic. A tour de force from one of our most striking new voices in fiction."

—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Rollicking, sensual...Required reading...[from] one of science fiction's most inventive and brilliant writers."

—New York Post

"A brilliant and multi layered tale."

—Black Issues Book Review

"Fans of science fiction author Nalo Hopkinson's previous works-Midnight Robber, Skin Folk, and Brown Girl in the Ring-will enjoy her latest novel."

—Essence

"Compellingly portrayed, with telling historical details and distinct voices. Recommended."

—Library Journal (starred review)

"Whirling with witchcraft and sensuality, the latest novel by Hopkinson is a globe-spanning, time-traveling spiritual odyssey...The novel has a genuine vitality and generosity. Epic and frenetic, it traces the physical and spiritual ties that bind its characters to each other and to the earth."

—Publishers Weekly

"[Hopkinson has] become one of the more visible champions of new and alternative voices in the [SF] field, as well as a writer with a uniquely distinctive voice of her own...[a] large-scale, densely textured work...she is able to transform those sexy but disenfranchised voices of her earlier fiction into the stuff of epic, and it's an epic which draws on corners of history-particular the history of women of color-that have been largely invisible in the mainstream traditions of fantasy."

—Locus

"The Salt Roads is a story we all should know."

—Nikki Giovanni, author of Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea

"Heartbreaking and beautiful...Hopkinson's writing is like a favorite song...A lyrical meditation on the lives of slaves and gods alike, a magical journey through a world unique to Hopkinson's broad vision."

—Tananarive Due, author of The Living Blood

"This one surprised me. Because I've read Nalo Hopkinson's previous books, I picked up The Salt Roads expecting it to be, like the others, a lyrical, cadenced, nuanced, knowing, evocative, provocative, instructive, thrilling, deeply moving examination of the human dilemma. It is much better than that."

—Spider Robinson, author of The Crazy Years

"Hopkinson's storytelling voice is compelling and unique."

—Lalita Tademy, author of Cane River

"It is simply amazing. With her conjurer's art, with daring and delightful audacity, Hopkinson reaches into the well of history. She chants power onto these pages...We do not so much read The Salt Roads as we are inhabited by it."

—Sandra Jackson-Opoku, author of Hot Johnny (and the Women Who Loved Him)

"A raw, passionate adventure...grounded in women's senses: a sound of whispered desire, sweat's salty taste, hands catching a newborn baby."

—Jewelle Gomez, author of The Gilda Stories

"A diverse ensemble of powerful and unforgettable women...The tale sings with verve and authenticity. A major achievement."

—Herb Boyd, editor, The Harlem Reader

"A fabulous, wonderful, inventive novel...a fine celebration of African heritage."

—Jewell Parker Rhodes, author of Magic City: A Novel