The Salt Garden [Paperback]

Cindy Martinusen Coloma (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 13, 2007

Three women's lives converge around the century-old mystery of a shipwreck. There's Sophia, a reclusive author who retreated from the world after a tragic loss, Claire, a young journalist who's reluctantly returned to her home town, and Josephine, a passenger from the ill-fated ship.

As they discover the truth about lost love and buried secrets, each woman finds hope, healing, and strength to face the future.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The lovely title of this Christian novel hints at its themes of shipwreck, youth lost and romance by the sea. In the waters beyond a small town on the Pacific coast, a shipwreck is being salvaged that will disclose secrets from the past. Martinusen (North of Tomorrow) tells her story from the viewpoints of three women. Claire O'Rourke is a San Francisco reporter recently returned to her small hometown of Harper's Bay for a short visit, but a contrived plot device leaves her back home for good and looking for work at The Tidal Post, a local newspaper. Her path soon intersects with that of Sophia Fleming, a 70-something reclusive author whom Claire has admired since childhood. When a salt-damaged book washes ashore, some long-buried secrets are illuminated through the journal entries of Josephine Vanderook, a passenger on an ill-fated ship. As the story unfolds, Martinusen introduces enjoyable characters: "Cap Charlie" is an old salt who makes lattes and espresso below decks; Claire's potential love interest, Griffin Anderson, is a scrap junk sculptor whose work is displayed on town roofs. Despite some good descriptions, Martinusen often overwrites ("glaze drips likes a lazy yawn onto the table") and the pacing, mired in description and wordiness, drags. The city-girl-returns-to-her-hometown theme has been done to death in CBA fiction, and the somewhat unfocused story never really takes off. However, Martinusen has potential, and despite the problems in this story, her talent shines through.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Back Cover

There are places within us we do not often share...until our hearts find connection in extraordinary ways.

• Claire O’Rourke--a 24-year-old writer dreaming of a glowing career in the literary world.
• Sophia Fleming--an aging recluse whose painful past has kept her hidden away for decades.
• Josephine Vanderook--a woman long dead, whose journal holds the key to a terrible secret.

For nearly one hundred years, a mystery has surrounded a shipwreck on the rocky coast of Orion Point. The shipbuilder’s wife, Josephine Vanderook, survived but her husband didn’t. Josephine’s memoir will unlock more than the mystery of that fateful night--her words of lost love will shape the lives of an elderly woman who has lost hope in tomorrow and a young woman who struggles to find her way.

Three women whose lives converge on Orion Point. As they discover the truth about lost love and buried secrets, they find new hope and healing...and strength to face the future. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Thomas Nelson (February 13, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1595542922
• ISBN-13: 978-1595542922
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,367,062 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mystery Wrapped in Beauty, August 15, 2004

By 

Eric Wilson "novelist" (Nashville, TN United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Salt Garden (Paperback)

Martinusen is an underappreciated author. In the past, she's woven thoughtful suspense stories around WWII secrets; she's crafted characters we care for and can't forget. Here, in "The Salt Garden," she tries a different angle--with remarkable results.

Less overtly suspenseful, yet full of mystery and secrets, this book takes us into the hearts and minds of three women--a modern, frustrated reporter; a reclusive, elderly novelist; and a deceased journal writer. The threads of these women's stories intertwine, then pull tighter and tighter as more facts come to light. The pages are filled with beautiful imagery and thought-provoking introspection. Martinusen shows her skill, letting each character have a voice distinctly her own.

I believe Cindy Martinusen has many more tales to tell. Her heart for God, her struggle with the issues of life, and her honesty in the midst of it all lend weight to her words and emotion to each of her stories. More readers should take notice!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Intelligent, grace-filled work, June 15, 2004

By 

Janet Holm McHenry (Northern California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Salt Garden (Paperback)

If you're looking for a novel that will challenge your thinking, I recommend "The Salt Garden." Cindy Martinusen has written a novel that makes you examine your faith--for the purpose of deepening it. Here are some examples:
"If only grace came without the need for it."
"There is something fearful in revealing our true selves, allowing others to peer intimately inside. It takes such trust, and none of us is completely trustworthy."
"The past is like a coat I put on every morning, defining me in many ways."
If a book doesn't make me think more deeply about life, God and who I am, it's not worth my time. That's what I loved about Martinusen's book.
I also thought her multiple first person narrators were an interesting trio. I related a lot to Claire, the city news reporter who goes home to her small town with an inflated view of her importance. We all need to learn we're wrong about others and life sometimes.
I highly recommend "The Salt Garden."

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Quiet and Lovely Novel, June 6, 2004

By 

FaithfulReader.com (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Salt Garden (Paperback)

Seasoned Christian novelist Cindy McCormick Martinusen combines elements from so many fine genres, reminiscent of so many fine secular authors in her new novel, THE SALT GARDEN: seaside mystery elements like Victoria Holt, historical intrigue like M.M. Kaye, gentle romantic spirit like Rosamond Pilcher, and family interaction like Jodi Picoult. In this book, three characters (two living, one dead) alternate telling the story.

San Francisco reporter Claire O'Rourke is a young woman who has returned to her hometown of Harper's Bay ostensibly for a visit, but winds up staying and taking a job at The Tidal Post when family circumstances change. As she settles into what turns out to be a much-needed change of pace, her path crosses with that of Sophia Fleming, a once-lauded and now-reclusive author in her seventies who lives on a small island off the coast. The character of Josephine Vanderook speaks from the pages of a saltwater-encrusted diary that Sophia finds in a rock pool on her morning walk.

Soon the voices of these three women are creating a sort of call-and-response in their alternating pages. Although Claire, Sophia and Josephine have many differences, their common threads of loving words and writing as well as their devotion to God begin to bind them together and lessen differences of time, age and circumstance. Sophia, who has been hoarding the diary to herself rather than give it to the town museum, finds that the new young woman on the scene seems very familiar to her, and when she allows Claire in to her home and read the diary pages, the faith of the two modern women is contrasted with their historical counterpart.

Martinusen's central message seems to be that everyone's path to faith --- Claire's, Sophia's, Josephine's --- takes a different course. Some of the "big city, little city" contrast is overdone, and some of the characters, like the latte-brewing "Cap'n Charlie," seem a little too quaint. But the friendship between Sophia and Ben that blossoms into romance, despite some very real present-day and past obstacles, is beautifully drawn, as is the "romance" of working at an old-fashioned, slow-going but industrious newspaper for Claire. As Claire begins a relationship with town artist Griffin and her family faces a crisis surrounding her brother and a little girl he is protecting, Ben is facing a tough choice about retirement and Sophia seems almost lost in her solitude.

Yet the strongest element of this book has less to do with character details and plot points than it does with the author's own spiritual grace. On her Web site, when asked what she hopes to accomplish through her writing, Cindy says, "I definitely always want to glorify God in my writing. I don't want to lose touch with that --- to get so into the writing that I lose the fact that this is God's calling. I want to be able to balance both of those so it's like seeking God through the story." Martinusen's sensibility to the different spiritual stages of her characters sets this book apart from other Christian novels.

--- Reviewed by Bethanne Kelly Patrick