Lingering difficulties
from the past simmer throughout Sugar
and Salt, a compassionately poignant novel of domestic fiction by
author Susan
Wiggs.
Through a staggered
timeline, Wiggs (The Lost
and Found Bookshop) builds a romance between two characters who come
from vastly different backgrounds: Margot Salton of Texas traveled a long, hard
road to become an award-winning chef. As a teenager, she forged her own way in
the world after her single mother--a talented cook--died. Tough, street smart
and self-reliant, Margot was taken in--mentored--by a kind, hardworking African
American couple, owners of an authentic Texas barbecue restaurant until a
second tragedy upended Margot’s life. Determined to cut her losses and start
anew, budding barbecue master Margot changes her identity and sets off, leaving
Texas behind and winding up in San Francisco, Calif., where she meets Jerome
Sugar, an African American baker who learned everything he knows from his warm,
self-made grandmother, Ida. The single father of two operates Ida’s
well-established, popular bakery, ‘Sugar.’ When Margot and Jerome work out a
deal to share kitchen space, and she opens her own restaurant next door called
‘Salt,’ the two form a professional bond that leads to romance. However, when
complications from Margot’s former Texas life resurface, the couple’s
relationship is tested. Can love in the present survive far reaching tentacles
from a sordid past?
Hot-button issues from
real life events inspired Wiggs to
write this complex, thought-provoking novel that depicts how the power of
friendship and love can overcome heart-wrenching challenges.
Sugar
and Salt: A Novel by Susan Wiggs
William Morrow
Books/Harper Collins, $27.99 hardcover, 9780062914224, 368 pages
Publication
Date: July 25, 2022
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NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being
posted with the permission of Shelf
Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (July 29, 2022), link HERE