A Woman of Salt: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: If it weren¿t for the shadows, would we see the light?
Review: A Woman of Salt is a beautifully written novel, composed of soulful language with a down to earth description of life. The midrashim, akin to the interludes in a song, are not only enlightening but enrich the novel. I thoroughly enjoyed this book not only because I could relate to the protagonist but also because it is the story of all those women whose lives are a constant struggle between light and darkness, the mind and the body, God and the world. The novel is not just a story of mother-daughter relationships but more so the determination of a woman (Ruth) not to let her past drown her but swims through it to the shore, to a new life. It is the tale of a woman who swam through the tunnel with darkness closing in around her and yet lunges forward to find the light at the end of the tunnel; a woman who took along her past to live the present. It tells of the courage of a woman who is not afraid to look back and become a woman of salt, a woman of spirit and substance, not turning away from God but toward God. It actually is the triumph of good over evil, a journey of faith - a twentieth-century woman of faith's confessions where Ruth puts her life through a microscope. She looks at the events of her life individually (abuse, drugs, suicide attempt), overcomes fear and anger - the two things that hinder the working of the Spirit - and learns to take responsibility and move on. A Woman of Salt is the tale of the journey of the soul, of self-examination where Ruth realizes that she needs to let go of the intellect to take on the body , the reality of existence. The novel is the story of a woman who decides not to be a victim but a victor, a sea turtle that dares to stick her head out of her shell and hold it up instead of being weighed down by her shell of burdens.
A Woman of Salt makes one think about what it means to reconnect with those who do not follow us. It reminds us that we need to be broken to be able to reconnect, to be made whole. A broken bone is stronger once it reconnects and knits together.

Rating:
Summary: Light through the Darkness.
Review: I was not sure what to expect when I picked up this book. As I began to read I was drawn in quickly and could not put it down. It is a dark and introspective book that encouraged me to look at my life and the life of many women around me. It is more that an average novel in that it brings in the bible story of lotts wife.IT is compares the lives of the fictional characters to that of the woman in the bible and it is facinating. This is not a cheery book but it is a rare find and I loved it. There was light in all that darkness for me. I highly recomend this book.

Rating:
Summary: The stuff of life
Review: Salt crystals are cubes, angular and edgy. So too is Mary Potter Engel's first novel. It's taken me months to finish. The yearning pain of this woman's search for wholeness is sometimes bitter, sometimes frightening, but never whining or sentimental. MEP's use of traditional Rabbinic storytelling forced me to remain constantly uncertain but open to different understandings of her pain...Perhaps that is what made the hard sharpness of her woman worth months of wondering reading.
I look forward eagerly to Mary Potter Engle's next work...and wonder how the conflicted bond of love she discovers, might evolve...I find myself yearning to witness how the angles and edges morph.