Salt Dancers

RETURNING HOME FOR UNDERSTANDING AFTER 23 YEARS: A haunting story about a young woman that goes back home after 23 years and an unplanned pregnancy to get answers from her past so she can feel comfortable that she will make a good mother to her child. Julia has avoided going home until now, running from her past and trying to create a life for herself independent of it. However, after one failed marriage and an unconventional relationship resulting in this pregnancy, she felt it was time to confront her demons or her father as the case may be.ABANDONED BY HER MOTHER AND PHYSICALLY ABUSED BY HER FATHER: Julia and her younger brother were abandoned by their mother when her mother left her unsatisfying and later abusive marriage to their father. Julia's recollections of her mother are about the good times and she has built up considerable fantasies about why her mother left them. She recognizes this, but mostly is troubled by the fact that her father beat her exclusive from her brother, later as she was growing up, and she never understood why. Also her brother remained with their father after they grew up and even though he briefly attended college, returned to the family home and continued to remain living with their father. She did not understand why he too did not choose to escape.JULIA WANTS TO UNDERSTAND WHY: Julia has returned to understand the past. This is not so easy as the past and present are not so easy to resolve to one another. Julia's father is now a frail older man that is well respected in the community. Only a few friends knew of the beatings Julia suffered at his hands. He is now and has through their correspondence over the years, very considerate of her needs. She feels this is all a sham and is determined to resolve her childhood traumas. USULA HEGI, DOES A MASTERFUL JOB OF BRINGING THE CHARACTERS TO LIFE: Ursula Hegi, does once again a masterful job of creating the musings of the main character's mind, weaving past present and other thoughts that crowd Julia's mind as she lives from day to day. You understand what Julia does and why she believes this. You can see how her mind works and what is important to her. Ms. Hegi did this masterfully in both "Stones from the River", "Floating in my Mother's palm" and "Unexpected pleasures" as well.

At 40, Julia is pregnant and unmarried. And knowing that her father is aging rapidly, she decides to return home and put to rest some of the demons which have plagued her for the past 23 years. Running away from a home which provided her with difficulty while growing up, it is as if Julia must now come to terms with this before she can become a parent herself.Salt Dancers focuses on various themes often discussed today which in the able hands of Ms. Hegi become painfully fresh and new. Themes such as forgiveness, emotional and physical abuse, abandonment, closure and finally moving on.Although Hegi is best known for her book Stones from the River, I have found all of her titles compelling, especially this one.

This book was amazing. I checked it out of the library because Stones From the River was not in stock. It turned out to be one of my best reads ever. I felt it told the real story of how people interact with eachother, and the effect of emotional scarring in one's youth. I would recomend this book to anyone.

I love reading about the past wars and getting the inside look at them. The one thing that I really loved about Stones From The River is that it didn't give you a general overview of the life people lived during the war with Hitler, but it gave you a close up look at some of the trials and tribulations that the people of the town went through. Following Trudi through her struggle of discovery you find yourself questioning,wondering and discovering the new ideas right along with Trudi. I for one can not relate with Trudi and what she lived through, but Hegi does such a good job at writing I almost felt like I could. I would really recomend this book and her other Salt Dancers to anyone who is in for the discovery of the real truth to life.

The Kirkus Review notwithstanding, this is a much more accessible, though not patronizing, account of a young woman's coming to terms with her family background. True, it is not "panoramic," as was Stones from the River. It is, in fact, the opposite, a story of just one real, fully drawn American adult woman who is pregnant, not the story, however wonderful Stones is, of a symbol whose life is different in every respect from that which most of us face daily. Though The Salt Dancers deals with common enough themes--alienation, the search for love, the desire to reconcile with the past--so do many other novels. What makes The Salt Dancers worth reading--indeed, what makes most good novels worth reading--is the fresh approach the author makes to these themes. Hegi's presentation of the distortions of memory alone make the book worth reading. Those who are expecting a sweeping novel in the tradition of Stones from the River may be disappointed. This reader, however, found The Salt Dancers more personally involving