Ring of Salt: A Memoir of Finding Home and Hope on the Wild Coast of Ireland
Ring of Salt: A Memoir of Finding Home and Hope on the Wild Coast of Ireland
Ring of Salt: A Memoir of Finding Home and Hope on the Wild Coast of Ireland
Description
Description
"Extraordinarily moving, exquisitely written, and socially revolutionary." --The Irish Times "Ring 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 Awake For 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 runs away to Ireland for a fresh start. Leaving behind a painful past, she chases her dream of becoming a novelist to the misty shores of the Aran Islands. There she meets a handsome and charming horse trainer, and her life takes on the glow of a fairy tale when they elope to Gretna Green. Five years later, her happy ending has twisted into a nightmare. Betsy is trapped in an abusive marriage, isolated and afraid with a newborn baby. On her son's first birthday, she must flee home again, this time turning to the women around her--her local survivor support group, a trusted family friend, and an online Smith College alumnae network--for help she'd never known she could ask for. After a brush with homelessness, she struggles to scrape together a living for herself and her son. On sleepless nights, she scrolls through real estate listings that might as well be castles in the air, and starts to foster an impossible dream: What if she could use her writing to buy a home, one that no one could take away from her and her baby? One that might become a haven, not just for her family, but other single parent artists and writers, too? When she discovers a historic knitting factory and former cinema on Ireland's rugged Connemara coastline, left empty and crumbling for years, that precarious dream becomes her lifeline. Over the next two years she works to crowdfund the old knitting factory's purchase by sharing its story and her own, in candid posts that range from the unexpectedly steep learning curves she encounters with home renovations and internet dating, to her heartbreaking fight to keep custody of her son, with her growing online community. But as the deadline to buy nears, she realizes she will have to reckon with everything she believes about family, survival, and what happily-ever-after truly means for her dream to have any chance of coming true. Ring of Salt combines a powerful and relatable narrative of survivorship and healing with lush writing about the windswept landscapes and rich mythology of rural Ireland to craft a real-world fairy tale about the ordinary, but no less life-changing, forms of magic we can all access: vulnerability, community, and the power of telling your own story.
About the Author
About the Author
Betsy Cornwell is a New York Times bestselling author of fantasy and historical novels for young people. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times's Modern Love, Fairy Tale Review, Parabola magazine, and elsewhere. She received the Irish Writers Centre's first Blue Mountains (Australia) residency and a Markievicz Award for her work on Ring of Salt. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Notre Dame and a BA from Smith College, and teaches at the University of Galway and Atlantic Technical University Sligo.
Critical Reviews
Critical Reviews
"Ring of Salt is one of those rare gems: a survivor story that is not only redemptive and inspirational-a lifeline of hope, a handbook of resilience, for readers who have gone or are going through any kind of sustained trauma or life-threatening hardship or crisis-but also a memoir that's as beautiful as it is courageous. . . The author's narrative skill drives the story unrelentingly forward. She can drop sentences that have the power to emotionally wind the reader or flood our minds with beauty. Communicating her own and others' stories from the downtrodden margins of traumatic experience, Ring of Salt nevertheless glows with what we need: the loving kindness of care, nurturing and people helping one another."--The Irish Times "Full of promise and resilience. . . Cornwell 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. Ring of Salt makes the reader feel the pull of rural Ireland and root for Cornwell's unlikely project to come to fruition."--Bookpage "Addicting...it will suck any reader in quickly, and for those who find themselves in Betsy's position, it will be a lifeline - a painful, admirable gift offered up so they will now see escape is possible."--Irish Independent "There are books you read, and then there are books that read you: books that reach into your heart and extract experiences you thought were yours alone, holding them up to the light so you can see them clearly. Betsy Cornwell's is that kind of book... She offers us something precious: permission to believe that we, too, can break ourselves free."--Hippocampus Magazine "Heartwrenching, profound...this is a story of resilience, new beginnings, and the magic of found family."--Irish Country Magazine "Betsy Cornwell has written a wondrous book. Free of the pitfalls of sentimental and saccharin prose one often sees in memoir, it is a book of resilience and fortitude, and a testament to the power of determined women. This book renewed something in my own heart. A beautiful tale of love, survival and community." --Rachel Louise Snyder, author of No Visible Bruises and Women We Buried, Women We Burned "When I grow up, I want to write like Betsy Cornwell! She's poetic and gritty and funny and heartbreaking. . . often in the same paragraph. Ring of Salt captures what it's like to rebuild from the ruins, to mother while mourning, and to find a safe home inside yourself when the world hasn't offered one. Cornwell doesn't mistake escape for freedom, and she writes beautifully about what comes after survival--the long, brave, often invisible work of building a new life. It's honest, lyrical, and quietly revolutionary." --Lara Love Hardin, New York Times bestselling author of The Many Lives of Mama Love
"Book clubs will pull Betsy Cornwell from these pages and into their circles in triumphant solidarity, rallying around her bravery, heralding her riveting story as one of their all-time favorites. I was rapt in anticipation through every turn, every moment of grit and grace in her journey. Ring of Salt is a lyrical, intimate account of self-empowerment, survival, and the intricate assembling of courage necessary to take your child by the hand and know that where you're going is more powerful than where you came from." --Carine McCandless, New York Times bestselling author of The Wild Truth "Betsy Cornwell's Ring of Salt is a beautifully written story of resilience, hope and hard-earned triumph. In sentences that shimmer like the incandescent Irish coastline, Cornwell enriches our definitions of survivorship and shows us how she found magic in everyday life. Readers will cheer for her as she weaves together a community--both near and far--that rallies around her as she leaves the dark chapters of her past behind and builds an abundant life." --Christie Tate, New York Times bestselling author of Group "A powerful and deeply empowering book, Ring of Salt is a hymn to the strength of community, a rallying cry against systemic injustice, and a testimony to the resilience of one woman's spirit. Beautifully written, this is an immersive exploration into the joy of finding home in unconventional places." --Roisín O'Donnell, author of Nesting "Ring of Salt is clear-eyed, open-hearted, and brimming with hope. As an artist, an ex-pat fleeing family violence, and an immigrant searching for a home in the world, Betsy Cornwell writes with urgency and candor, pulling readers along on her wild rollercoaster into love and heartbreak and out again. . . There are echoes here of ancient creation myths, of the timeless need for harmony with the natural world, and Cornwell's deep kinship with all the women, past and present, who have muscled a better life into existence for their children." --Anonymous, author of Becoming Duchess Goldblatt "A searingly painful yet stunning and hopeful piece of work. I am in awe of Cornwell's determination and courage and her ability to draw meaning from the darkest times. She has created a profound and beautiful piece of art from these experiences." --Sophie White, Shirley Jackson Award-winning author of Where I End "A stunning memoir, intimate and vast at once . . . Cornwell refuses to simplify or polarize her experience. Instead, she wrangles with the messiness of human connection, of the twin pull of an abusive relationship, the exhilaration and exhaustion of parenting, the power and abjection of motherhood. Braver still, is her insistence on looking, face-on, at our material reliance, debunking the myth of the American Dream to remind us of our dependency on one another, our interconnectedness. This is a very special book." --Elske Rahill, author of Between Dog and Wolf "Ring of Salt is the best memoir I've read in years. Think Practical Magic set on the Irish coast. As transportive as a fairy tale but as real as the Connemara wind on your face, every page pulses with the wild spirit of Ireland. This memoir is for anyone ready to believe in the power of resilience, reinvention, and the communities that catch us when we fall." --Marian Schembari, author of A Little Less Broken
"Book clubs will pull Betsy Cornwell from these pages and into their circles in triumphant solidarity, rallying around her bravery, heralding her riveting story as one of their all-time favorites. I was rapt in anticipation through every turn, every moment of grit and grace in her journey. Ring of Salt is a lyrical, intimate account of self-empowerment, survival, and the intricate assembling of courage necessary to take your child by the hand and know that where you're going is more powerful than where you came from." --Carine McCandless, New York Times bestselling author of The Wild Truth "Betsy Cornwell's Ring of Salt is a beautifully written story of resilience, hope and hard-earned triumph. In sentences that shimmer like the incandescent Irish coastline, Cornwell enriches our definitions of survivorship and shows us how she found magic in everyday life. Readers will cheer for her as she weaves together a community--both near and far--that rallies around her as she leaves the dark chapters of her past behind and builds an abundant life." --Christie Tate, New York Times bestselling author of Group "A powerful and deeply empowering book, Ring of Salt is a hymn to the strength of community, a rallying cry against systemic injustice, and a testimony to the resilience of one woman's spirit. Beautifully written, this is an immersive exploration into the joy of finding home in unconventional places." --Roisín O'Donnell, author of Nesting "Ring of Salt is clear-eyed, open-hearted, and brimming with hope. As an artist, an ex-pat fleeing family violence, and an immigrant searching for a home in the world, Betsy Cornwell writes with urgency and candor, pulling readers along on her wild rollercoaster into love and heartbreak and out again. . . There are echoes here of ancient creation myths, of the timeless need for harmony with the natural world, and Cornwell's deep kinship with all the women, past and present, who have muscled a better life into existence for their children." --Anonymous, author of Becoming Duchess Goldblatt "A searingly painful yet stunning and hopeful piece of work. I am in awe of Cornwell's determination and courage and her ability to draw meaning from the darkest times. She has created a profound and beautiful piece of art from these experiences." --Sophie White, Shirley Jackson Award-winning author of Where I End "A stunning memoir, intimate and vast at once . . . Cornwell refuses to simplify or polarize her experience. Instead, she wrangles with the messiness of human connection, of the twin pull of an abusive relationship, the exhilaration and exhaustion of parenting, the power and abjection of motherhood. Braver still, is her insistence on looking, face-on, at our material reliance, debunking the myth of the American Dream to remind us of our dependency on one another, our interconnectedness. This is a very special book." --Elske Rahill, author of Between Dog and Wolf "Ring of Salt is the best memoir I've read in years. Think Practical Magic set on the Irish coast. As transportive as a fairy tale but as real as the Connemara wind on your face, every page pulses with the wild spirit of Ireland. This memoir is for anyone ready to believe in the power of resilience, reinvention, and the communities that catch us when we fall." --Marian Schembari, author of A Little Less Broken
Publishing Information
Publishing Information
Publisher:
Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster
Pub date:
2026-10-06
Length:
352 pages
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