The Anxious Exile of Sara Salt
The Anxious Exile of Sara Salt
Dear Birdy,
Oh my gosh, today I was supposed to come and visit you for the second time but instead Abby and I had a crisis. This is what happened:
We are going to get on the train down to Hamilton so we can have time to see you, then borrow Mom's car to drive to Niagara Falls to my house and pick up some things from my next-year box (because I've been growing), stop at the souvenir store because I told Abby that Bryan has Niagara Falls bridge magnets with “Abby” on them, take some photo of the falls, play a round of dinosaur golf because I love it, go back to Hamilton to have an early dinner with Mom and Bryan and then get on the train to be back to be home in Toronto before dark.
But before we even left Toronto that all fell apart. I was packing a book and some pencils and a sketchbook and a sweater and a few snacks in my backpack because even though the train trip is not very long, I like to be prepared. Abby says it's always good to have provisions.
So I was in my new room that used to be Abby's room and Abby was in her room that used to be her office, when we heard people talking outside.
Abby and I met in the living room.
“What the…” Abby said, and she said a bad word under her breath. I pretended I didn't hear. I have my provisions in my backpack with me, so that made me feel brave. When Abby went outside to see what was going on, I went with her.
Abby's pods are at the back of an empty lot, and the lot itself is inside a high chain-link fence. The first time I visited her here, over a year ago, Mom said it was “like living in a prison camp.” Abby said her pod was like a mansion compared to most prison camps.
Abby and Mom don't see eye to eye about a lot of things.
Anyway, outside the chain-link fence two trucks were parked on the road, and two men and a woman were standing by them, taking pictures of the vacant lot in our pods. Abby strode across the lot, and I could tell she was trying to be stern the way she was walking, but she was wearing flip-flops and it's hard to be stern when your feet are going “slap, slap, slap.” I put on my sandals and followed her.
“Can I help you?” Abby said.
“Do you have a permit to live in this lot?” one of the men said.
“We're not living here,” Abby said.” This is my workplace.”
In The Anxious Exile of Sara Salt, Gabrielle Prendergast tells the story of her main character through Sara’s voice in a series of letters Sara has written. The majority of these letters are to her prematurely born baby brother, Oliver. Oliver is Sara’s half-brother; they share the same mother, but, in Sara’s heart, Oliver is her whole brother. In order to cope with Oliver’s early arrival and the complications it brings, Sara’s mother and step dad send Sara to Toronto to live with her older half-sister, Abby. Abby is an architect who wants to help the unhoused and believes that establishing a community would help the situation. Abby wants to use containers, which she calls pods, as single family homes. Eventually, she hopes to have a community of 120 people living on the vacant lot. There are stumbling blocks along the way that Sara helps Abby to overcome. All of this occurs while Sara and Abby wait to hear about Oliver’s progress and the heart surgery he needs.
This novel, written as a series of letters, has many interwoven themes. It is about Sara who is a selective mute and her attempts at overcoming this challenge. It is about what it means to be a family and whether it is just biology or more. It is about all of our responsibility to help those less fortunate. It is about friendship. It is about perceptions. It is about pride. All of these interlinked messages make the story fast-paced and difficult to put down. By the end of the novel, readers will be rooting for all of the characters and asking themselves what they can do to help.
The Anxious Exile of Sara Salt is a touching story, well-written and a must-read!
Christina Pike, who was a junior high administrator in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, is now retired and currently living in Paradise (a town in NL).