cover image The Salt God’s Daughter

The Salt God’s Daughter

Ilie Ruby. Soft Skull, $25 (432p) ISBN 978-1-61902-002-3

Ruby’s second novel (after The Language of Trees) imbues the complex relationships between mothers and daughters with legends and feminist mysticism to create a confusing family history dotted with magical realism. Ruthie and Dolly’s mother, Diana, is dramatic and unreliable, part Pied Piper, part con artist. The family drifts (both girls’ fathers are absent and unexplained), but Diana finds herself drawn to Long Beach, Calif., where she’s a housekeeper at a motel and watches the omnipresent sea lions. There, the girls find a settled life until alcoholism and depression hasten their mother’s death and they move into the care of nuns at a home for teenage girls. The nuns are both overwhelmed by the worldly life of their charges and caring stewards of womanhood. As a young woman, with one brief marriage already behind her, Ruthie moves back to work at the motel, now a nursing home, where she falls in love with a mysterious fisherman she calls “the Salt God.” Family secrets and otherworldly powers slowly unfold until all is explained. Though Ruby’s writing is elegant and insightful, particularly in revealing the ways in which the mother-daughter bond can end in disappointment, the long time line and haphazard mythologies muddle the tale. Agent: Sally Wofford-Girand, Brick House. (Sept.)