Cover design: Angela Yen
** Finalist for the 2022 ReLit Novel Award. **
** Shortlisted for three 2022 Saskatchewan Book Awards, including the Fiction Award, the City of Regina Award, and the Book of the Year Award. **
** Designated a “most anticipated” book for its month of release by Lambda Literary. **
It’s the early nineties, and in the small prairie town of Saltus nothing ever seems to happen. Two waitresses—Trish and Lenore—spend their evening shifts delivering Salisbury steak specials and slices of pie to the regulars at the Harvest Gold Inn and Restaurant off Highway 53. Trish is a young mother who wants to be anything but. Lenore is a single woman approaching fifty who has never come to terms with her identity as an adoptee disconnected from her Métis heritage. And Roger is one of their regulars—a constable on the brink of retirement, struggling to imagine what his new life will look like.
Then, something does happen. The lives and identities of these small-town characters are thrown into turmoil when a headstrong single mother arrives at the hotel with a teenager who has repeatedly been denied appropriate gender-affirming medical care by the mainstream system. The events that transpire that evening force each character to look long and hard at themselves, and the traumas and experiences that have shaped them. Told from multiple perspectives, Saltus reveals the inherent complexities of accepting the identities of those we love, and the tragic consequences that unfold if they are ignored. It is a story about women and motherhood, aging and regret, navigating relationships with others and the importance of knowing ourselves.
Published by Nightwood Editions.