“Wondrous . . . This book renewed something in my own heart.”
Ring of Salt
Maid meets Under the Tuscan Sun in this inspiring and lyrical memoir about a writer and mother who flees an abusive marriage and must learn to reclaim the story of her life through a search for home on Ireland’s wild, western coast.
The Ireland & UK edition of Ring of Salt is forthcoming from Renegade Books on October 9.
Preorder it from your local bookstore or here.
“Betsy Cornwell has written a wondrous book. Free of the pitfalls of sentimental and saccharin prose one often sees in memoir, it is a book of resilience and fortitude, and a testament to the power of determined women. This book renewed something in my own heart. A beautiful tale of love, survival and community.”
“Ring of Salt was so vast and tender and urgent, it was almost like reading a novel. I couldn’t put it down. I haven’t cheered for a heroine like Betsy in ages.”
“A lyrical, intimate account of self-empowerment, survival, and the intricate assembling of courage necessary to take your child by the hand and know that where you’re going is more powerful than where you came from.”
“Ring of Salt is the best memoir I’ve read in years. Think ‘Practical Magic’ set on the Irish coast. As transportive as a fairytale, but as real as the Connemara wind on your face, every page pulses with the wild spirit of Ireland. This memoir is for anyone ready to believe in the power of resilience, reinvention, and the communities that catch us when we fall.”
“Betsy Cornwell’s Ring of Salt is a beautifully written story of resilience, hope and hard-earned triumph. In sentences that shimmer like the incandescent Irish coastline, Cornwell enriches our definitions of survivorship and shows us how she found magic in everyday life. Readers will cheer for her as she weaves together a community—both near and far—that rallies around her as she leaves the dark chapters of her past behind and builds an abundant life.”
“A searingly painful yet stunning and hopeful piece of work. I am in awe of Cornwell’s determination and courage and her ability to draw meaning from the darkest times. She has created a profound and beautiful piece of art from these experiences.”
“A powerful and deeply empowering book, Ring of Salt is a hymn to the strength of community, a rallying cry against systemic injustice, and a testimony to the resilience of one woman’s spirit. Beautifully written, this is an immersive exploration into the joy of finding home in unconventional places. ”
“A truly beautifully written, heart wrenching memoir that brings the power of community, and the power of women, to every page. This is a survivor’s story, but it’s also a fairytale, one of darkness and light that has the happiest of endings - an ending that, like the circle of life that Betsy Cornwell brings so viscerally to the page, is just the beginning. Betsy takes you with her on an incredible journey from the cloying damp of an isolated cottage, chill with her fear, to the warmth and sweetness of of sunripened wild strawberries and stunning sunsets, her child in her arms every step of the way. Emotional, spellbinding, inspirational, Ring of Salt is a tour-de-force of a book. ”
“A stunning memoir, intimate and vast at once. Ring of Salt is a story of human interactions - nurturing, sexual, supportive and destructive, which Cornwell captures in all their complexity, intensity and inconsistency. What I love is her refusal to simplify or polarise her experience. Instead, she wrangles with the messiness of human connection, of the twin pull of an abusive relationship, the exhilaration and exhaustion of parenting, the power and abjection of motherhood. Braver still, is her insistence on looking, face-on, at our material reliance, debunking the myth of the American Dream to remind us of our dependency on one another, our interconnectedness. This is a very special book ”