Some stories teach us about history by giving us facts. Others make us feel what it means to live through that history. Our Cut of Salt by Deena Helm belongs firmly in the second category. This lyrical, unsettling debut follows three generations of Palestinian women as they confront the history of their family, the loss of their ancestral home in Haifa, and the supernatural consequences of a trauma that has never really been allowed to end.
It is a heart-wrenching story, but it is also an important one. There are some subjects that fiction can illuminate in ways that straightforward nonfiction cannot, because fiction allows us to inhabit the emotional reality of an experience rather than simply learning about it. Helm uses the conventions of the haunted-house story to explore displacement, cultural erasure, generational trauma, and the complicated meaning of home. The result is a novel in which the supernatural elements are disturbing, but the real-world horrors behind them are even more so.
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