The Price of Salt

Therese is nineteen and working in a department store during the Christmas shopping season. She dates men, although not with real enthusiasm. One day a beautiful older woman comes over to her counter and buys a doll. As the purchase is a C.O.D. order, Therese makes a mental note of the customer’s address.  She is intrigued and drawn to the woman.  Although young, inexperienced and shy, she writes a note to the customer, Carol, and is elated and surprised when Carol invites her to meet.

Therese realizes she has strong feelings for Carol, but is unsure of what they represent. Carol, in the process of a bitter separation and divorce, is also quite lonely.  Soon the two women begin spending a great deal of time together.  Before long, they are madly and hopelessly in love. The path is not easy for them, however. Carol also has a child and a very suspicious husband--dangerous ground for the lovers.  When the women leave New York and travel west together, they discover the choices they’ve made to be together will have lasting effects on both their lives.

Considered to be the first lesbian pulp novel to break the pulp publishing industry-enforced pattern of tragic consequences for its lesbian heroines, The Price of Salt was written by Patricia Highsmith (under the pseudonym, Claire Morgan) – the author of Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley.

As one reviewer wrote in 1952, “Claire Morgan is completely natural. She has a story to tell and she tells it with an almost conversational ease. Her people are neither degenerate monsters nor fragile victims of the social order. They must—and do—pay a price for thinking, feeling and loving ‘differently,’ but they are courageous and true to themselves throughout.”