{ "item_title" : "Ring of Salt", "item_author" : [" Betsy Cornwell "], "item_description" : "Extraordinarily moving, exquisitely written, and socially revolutionary. --The Irish TimesRing of Salt is so vast and tender and urgent, it's almost like reading a novel. I couldn't put it down. I haven't cheered for a heroine like Betsy in ages. --Jen Hatmaker, author of AwakeFor readers of Maggie Smith and Stephanie Land, an inspiring and lyrical memoir about a writer and mother who flees an abusive marriage and must learn to reclaim the story of her life through a search for home on Ireland's wild, western coast. At twenty-four, Betsy Cornwell flees a painful past in the US to chase a fresh start in Ireland. Landing on the misty shores of the Aran Islands, she can't believe her luck when a whirlwind romance with a charming horse trainer leads to an elopement. But five years later, her happy ending has twisted beyond recognition: Trapped in an abusive marriage with a one-year-old baby, Betsy makes a desperate escape with her son, checking into a hotel under a false name so her husband can't track them down. Over the difficult years that follow, Betsy struggles to scrape together enough money for rent, often having to rely on the unexpected generosity of networks of women--friends, fellow survivors, and even an online alumnae group--to stay afloat. So when she discovers a long-abandoned knitting factory nestled by a quiet lake along the Connemara coast, she pieces together a seemingly impossible dream: She will restore the forgotten building into the safe, stable home for her son that she never had--and eventually, into a sanctuary for other single parents and their children, too. Buoyed by her new community through a terrifying battle over the custody of her son, Betsy holds fast to her vision. As she lovingly (and sometimes disastrously) repairs the crumbling house, she must confront the remains of the broken fairy tales she was raised on, the ones that every woman knows by heart--about what love and family and monsters are supposed to look like--and rebuild herself and her future, brick by brick.", "item_img_path" : "https://covers4.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/1/66/804/529/166804529X_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "29.00", "online_price" : "29.00", "our_price" : "29.00", "club_price" : "29.00", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "29.00" } }

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At 24, American Betsy Cornwell had come to Ireland’s Aran Islands for a summer to work on her first novel and to leave behind some difficult family issues. The stark beauty of the islands, along with her day job at a travel hostel, charmed her: “I arrived on Inis Mor in selkie weather: the ocean, sky and shoreline all shone silver with the gentle mist the Irish call ‘a grand soft day.’ ” Her summer turned even more magical when she met Tommy, a horse trainer from nearby Galway. Betsy and Tommy were soon serious, and Betsy fell hard for the handsome older man. After a whirlwind courtship, the two pledged their undying love and married. But the fairy tale life soon curdled: Tommy showed himself to be short-tempered, untrustworthy and emotionally and physically abusive. Still, it took five years before Betsy could see the abuse for what it was and work up the courage to leave with the couple’s infant son, Robin. After she fled, Tommy stalked her, declaring that he’d get her deported and separate her permanently from their son. With no paternity support and only her intermittent income from writing and teaching, Betsy struggled to keep herself and Robin housed. She was unable to leave Ireland because of Tommy’s claim on baby Robin, but she was herself undocumented and unsure if Ireland would allow her to stay. Despite this bleak situation, Ring of Salt: A Memoir of Finding Home and Hope on the Wild Coast of Ireland is full of promise and resilience, recounting Betsy’s journey from being nearly homeless and friendless to working toward a new dream: the creation of a writing residency in a historic knitting factory for writer-mothers like herself. She finds friendship and community in a private message board for Smith College alums and the support group she attends with other women who have survived domestic abuse. She longs to build a refuge where women like herself might “have dreams that are not about survival.” Cornwell, the author of YA fantasy novels The Forest Queen and Mechanica, among others, writes with a poet’s eye about the Irish landscape, the sea and her little garden, seamlessly weaving in bits of Irish folklore, history and fairy tales as she processes her abuse and learns to dream again. “I take my life in my hands,” Cornwell writes. “I feel for the holes, I find them, and I mend them where I can.” Ring of Salt makes the reader feel the pull of rural Ireland and root for Cornwell’s unlikely project to come to fruition.