Salt

Disgrifiad Cymraeg / Welsh Description

Lle brwnt a diflas yw Caerdydd yn 1878 i Ellen sy'n breuddwydio am ddianc o'i bywyd yn gwasanaethu. Mae'n syrthio mewn cariad gyda Samuel ac yn llwyddo i wireddu ei breuddwyd trwy redeg i ffwrdd gydag ef. Ond mae bywyd ar y môr yn beryglus a chreulon, a phan mae'n dychwelyd adref mae'n darganfod bod caledi bywyd y dosbarth gweithiol a hiliaeth yn dechrau gwenwyno eu bywydau.

Disgrifiad Saesneg / English Description

Cardiff in 1878 is grimy, crowded and grey, and Ellen dreams of escaping her dreary life as a domestic for the sea. But when she falls in love with Samuel she is able to fulfil her destiny by running away with him. Life at sea is brutal and dangerous, and when circumstances bring her home the hardships of working class life and racism begin to poison their lives.

Dosbarthu

Byddwn yn dosbarthu eitemau sydd mewn stoc o fewn 3 diwrnod gwaith, fel arfer drwy Royal Mail Tracked 48. Ar gyfer archebion o flaen llaw, byddwn yn dosbarthu’r eitem o fewn 3 diwrnod gwaith ar ôl ei derbyn gan ein cyflenwr.

Dispatch

In-stock items will be dispatched within 3 business days, usually by Royal Mail Tracked 48. For pre-orders, we’ll dispatch within 3 business days of receiving the item from our supplier.

Adolygiad y Cyhoeddwr / Publisher Review

Salt opens in Cardiff. It is 1941, and Ellen, bedridden with a broken hip, listens as German bombs rain down on the city. The blast from one bomb, a near miss, shatters windows, smashes crockery, and breaks her most prized possession, a ship in a bottle made by her long-dead husband, Samuel. This is the story of Ellen and her unconventional life, with Chapter 2 going back to 1883 when she was a young girl working in a dead-end job as a housemaid. Ellen knows there must be more to life than this, and she finds it when she meets Samuel, a young seaman from Barbados who works as a ship’s cook. There is mutual attraction and after a brief courtship they marry and Ellen persuades her husband to take her with him on his next voyage from Cardiff to San Francisco. There follows a vivid description of the voyage – the savage storms encountered rounding Cape Horn, the conditions onboard, in the galley, in steerage. Descriptions, too, of Valparaiso where the ship puts in, and of a San Francisco which in the 1880s is still a vibrant, bustling frontier town. They both like it there and Samuel dreams of setting up a little café selling good food and beer. First, though, they take a ship to Barbados to see his mother, only to find that she has died. Back in San Francisco Samuel sets about repairing a shack where they will live and establish their café. The dream is shattered however when Ellen gets news that her mother, who was always unstable, has been committed to an asylum. She insists on their returning to Cardiff so that she can look after her. Reluctantly, Samuel agrees. It is the beginning of their trials. Ellen now has a baby son, Louis, as well as her mother to look after, and Samuel comes up against a wall of racist exclusion as he tramps from place to place looking for work. In desperation he eventually signs on as ship’s cook again, and from this point he and Ellen are together only when his ship docks back in south Wales. Ellen’s struggles in the 1880s and ’90s are interwoven with her old age in 1941, when her son is a grown man with children of his own. Theirs is a family bound by love, but outside the walls of their home her son and grandchildren face a world of racist taunts and threats of violence. Forget the fabled racial tolerance of Tiger Bay, this is a Cardiff of low-level racial bigotry and prejudice. It is to be the cause of a final, tragic rift between Ellen and Samuel. On one visit home, she persuades him to come to a party given by a wealthy benefactor who has helped her set up a little sweet shop. He agrees, reluctantly, but they are ostracized by the other bourgeois white guests, and Samuel finally explodes with anger and frustration when he sees a porcelain money box in the shape of a caricature black man’s head. Ellen, too, becomes angry out of embarrassment, accusing Samuel of being a ‘stranger’ in her world. It is cruel and she instantly regrets it, but Samuel disappears, signing on again as a ship’s cook. She wants to apologise, to make up, but it is too late. Salt is, as the blurb says, a love story. It is also the tragedy of a love that survives but falters in a world where low-level racial prejudice is always just below the surface. This is handled very well by Catrin Kean and has an obvious relevance to the world of today where Black Lives Matter has exposed again the racial intolerance endemic in our society. Salt has won the Rhys Davies Trust Fiction Award, the Wales Arts Review People’s Choice Award, as well as the Wales Book of the Year 2021 award.