BOOKMONGER
‘Sometimes
survival is relative’
Novella tells of fl eeing
ghosts and chasing dreams
‘The Salt Fields’ is a novella written by Stacy D. Flood about life in the Jim Crow era South.
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a train for the North, where he hears there are
more opportunities for Black men.
Riding in the same seating compartment
of the segregated passenger car are a newly-
wed couple, Divinion and Lanah, and Car-
Stacy D. Flood grew up in Buff alo, New vall, a soldier just discharged from the Army.
The train ride north is going to take about
York, but as a young man came to the West
Coast to work on his Master of Fine Arts in 24 hours, so the four of them fall into a con-
creative writing in the Bay Area. After trav- versation that quickly takes on the intimacy
of strangers who are never going to see one
eling the world over since then, he’s settled
in Seattle , at least for now, where his career another again.
Divinion is full of big talk, to which his
as a playwright has taken off .
bride takes exception. But when he ignores
her peevishness and continues to converse
with Carvall, Lanah focuses her wiles upon
This week’s book
Minister.
‘The Salt Fields’ by Stacy D. Flood
The train clatters north through the coun-
Lanternfi sh — 130 pp — $14; kindle $7.99
tryside, through fi elds of cotton that appear as
a sea of white. When Minister observes that it
looks like salt, Carvall notes that “there’s salt
all over Carolina, salt from tears and blood
But earlier this year, Flood also had a
and the dead ….
novella published. “The Salt Fields” may be
“The whole South
a slim volume, but it
ain’t nothing but a
packs a punch.
AND LONG AFTER
scar with some salt
You’ll read, in the
READING THE LAST
on it.”
fi rst few pages of this
PAGE OF THIS BOOK,
The train makes
fi rst-person narra-
tive, that “sometimes
READERS OF ALL KINDS several extended
along the way,
survival is relative.”
WILL FIND THEMSELVES stops
which gives the trav-
And as you get pulled
PONDERING FLOOD’S
elers time to get out,
deeper into the story
NUANCED
INTIMATIONS visit relatives, dine at
of Minister Peters
OF GENERATIONAL
a local café, gamble
you’ll learn that in
or get a haircut. But
his experience there’s
TRAUMA, SYSTEMIC
they are still in the
a corollary — that
RACISM, REGRET AND
South, with all of its
oftentimes relatives
REINVENTION.
attendant perils.
don’t survive.
Despite the brevity
Minister, that’s his
of this book , Flood creates a densely detailed
fi rst name, is a Black man who was born in
the Jim Crow South. He comes from a family world of sensations and ideas. There are
images and scenarios enough to keep a sym-
of loss. He is the son of an orphan. He is the
bologist busy for quite some time.
husband of a woman who was found mur-
And long after reading the last page of
dered soon after she ran away with another
this book, readers of all kinds will fi nd them-
man. And a year and a half after that, Minis-
selves pondering Flood’s nuanced intima-
ter’s only child falls into a well and drowns.
tions of generational trauma, systemic rac-
“People disappear in the South, one way
ism, regret and reinvention.
or another,” Minister says. Especially Black
The Bookmonger is Barbara Lloyd McMi-
folks.
chael, who writes this weekly column focus-
Unmoored, he decides to leave the South
ing on the books, authors and publishers of
and its ghosts behind. He gives his house to
the Pacifi c Northwest. Contact her at bar-
the neighbor girl, an unwed teenage mom
whose boyfriend has disappeared, and boards baralmcm@gmail.com