The Salt Eaters

In the fictional town of Claybourne, Georgia, Minnie Ransom, the fabled healer of the district, sits on a stool at the Southwest Community Infirmary with her hands on Velma Henry, a community activist and organizer who has tried to take her own life. The whole novel radiates out from that healing moment. Bambara moves among the veterans of the civil rights, feminist, and anti-war movements who fill the town, the musicians and mud mothers and spirits who move through it, and the memories that brought Velma to the edge. Minnie calls on her own spirit guide, an old haint she calls Old Wife, to reach a patient who is not sure she wants to be well, and the book asks what it costs a Black community to stay whole.