From the SFWA Grand Master, aâsexy, disturbing, touching, wildly comic . . . tour de forceâ that blends fantasy, womenâs history, and slavery (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).
Â
In 1804, shortly before the Caribbean island of Saint Domingue is renamed Haiti, a group of women gather to bury a stillborn baby. Led by a lesbian healer and midwife named Mer, the womenâs lamentations inadvertently release the dead infantâs âunused vitalityâ to draw Eziliâthe Afro-Caribbean goddess of sexual desire and loveâinto the physical world.
Â
As Ezili explores her newfound powers, she travels across time and space to inhabit the midwifeâs body, as well as those of Jeanneâa mixed-race dancer and the mistress of Charles Baudelaire living in 1880s Parisâand Meritet, an enslaved Greek-Nubian prostitute in ancient Alexandria.
Â
Bound together by Ezili and âthe salt roadâ of their sweat, blood, and tears, the three women struggle against a hostile world, unaware of the goddessâs presence in their lives. Despite her magic, Mer suffers as a slave on a sugar plantation until Ezili plants the seeds of uprising in her mind. Jeanne slowly succumbs to the ravages of age and syphilis when her lover is unable to escape his motherâs control. And Meritet, inspired by Ezili, flees her enslavement and makes a pilgrimage to Egypt, where she becomes known as Saint Mary.
Â
With unapologetically sensual prose, Nalo Hopkinson, the Nebula Awardâwinning author of Midnight Robber, explores slavery through the lives of three historical women touched by a goddess in this âelectrifying bravura performance by one of our most important writersâ (Junot DÃaz).