The Salt Roads

Nalo Hopkinson

Oct 2018 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Bahni Turpin

About this audiobook

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.

About the author

Nalo Hopkinson is a novelist, editor, and short story writer. Her groundbreaking science fiction and fantasy features diverse characters and the mixing of folklore into her works. Hopkinson won the Warner Aspect First Novel contest for Brown Girl in the Ring, as well as the John W. Campbell and Locus Awards.

Bahni Turpin is a native of Pontiac, Michigan, now residing in Los Angeles. An acclaimed theater actress and ensemble member of Cornerstone Theater Company, Bahni has narrated over seventy audiobooks. In addition to her onstage and narration work, Bahni has worked extensively in TV and film.