The Salt Letters — Christine Balint

The sensuous evocation of a young woman's sea journey from refined England to the wilds of Australia.

It is 1854, and with the certainty of land behind her, Sarah flees her home for the uncertainties of life in the new colony. In steerage, she joins the other unmarried women, where the horrors of their close confinement bring an unraveling of secrets no one can control. Sarah endures, longing for her mother's forgiveness and the sweetness of her cousin Richard's breath. As she draws closer to her new land, she becomes increasingly haunted by her own tale and the letter home she cannot write. Moving between the voyage in which pigs run through flooded living quarters to the hallucinatory visions induced by heat and doldrums, Christine Balint's astonishing debut novel brings us close to a time when the world was still a place to be discovered. Shortlisted for the Vogel Literary Award. "Dazzling.... A meticulous history and a beautifully crafted fiction.... Compelling reading." -- Brisbane Courier Mail