The Salt God's Daughter

By: Ilie Ruby

Narrated by: Jane Jacobs

Ethereal in scope and threaded with Jewish mysticism and Celtic folklore, The Salt God's Daughter weaves an unforgettable tale of female rites of passage, family secrets, and the enduring hold of ancestry.

Single mother, Diana, and her two daughters, Ruthie and Dolly, navigate their lives by the stars as they search for a place to call home across Southern California. Theirs is an oceanic wilderness teeming with the spirits of sea lions, where stability comes and goes like the phases of the moon, men walk out of the waves, promising love, and faith rises from the sea to the sky and back. While Diana's impoverished lifestyle causes upheaval and difficulty for the girls, their gritty determination and loyalty to each other sustains them. When tragedy strikes, Ruthie finds solace in caring for others - and in her love for mysterious fisherman; Dolly's rage turns inward. Years later, when Ruthie's own daughter shares her grandmother's strange connection to the ocean, she is forced to question all she believes about the past, the future, and the power of her own irrevocable will.

A story that shows how one connection can heal us - between woman and nature, mother and daughter, between two sisters, or with the first person with whom you've shared your heart. A stunning, raw, evolutionary tale about the ties that bind and the discoveries made when you're searching for love and discover yourself.

©2012 Ilie Ruby (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

The Price of Being Sensitive

In "The Salt God's Daughter", a teenage girl presents a mystery. Who is this young woman's father? Why did he leave? —And what’s up her deformed foot?

There’s a huge consequences-of-bullying theme here, as well as that of close-female bonds. The Salt God's Daughter reminded me of "White Oleander," not because of the plot, but the energy of the mother-daughter relationships.

I've been mulling over and thinking about this story long after I read it. It brings up so many feelings: longing for lost family, hurt, and love. In some ways, this novel is simply about the price of being a sensitive creature—something "far above rubies," of any color or clarity.