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Title: The Salt of Broken Tears

Subtitle: A Novel

Author: Michael Meehan

Narrator: Cynthia Barrett, Alan Robertson

Format: Unabridged

Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins

Language: English

Release date: 02-23-13

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 3 of 5 out of 1 votes

Genres: Fiction, Historical

Publisher's Summary:

On the edge of the remote salt flats of Australia, a young woman blows in from nowhere and disturbs the precarious equilibrium of a family farm. The boy is fascinated by her, his mother despises her, and the brutish farmhand wants to possess her. When the woman mysteriously disappears, the only trace of her a bloodied dress, the boy sets out in search of an Indian hawker who may or may not have the answers. As he journeys through the broken landscape, accompanied only by his horse and his dog, the boy becomes aware of another party converging murderously on his destination.

Editorial Reviews:

A sensual young woman stumbles into a farm on the remote Australian salt flats, and narrators Cynthia Barrett and Alan Robertson terrifically embody the emotional upheaval she causes. Their shifts in tension and pitch clearly define the family's reactions: the boy's voyeuristic fascination, his mother's suspicion and jealousy, the farmhand's loutish desire. When the young woman vanishes, the boy takes his horse and dog to search for her, convinced that she has joined a charismatic Indian peddler. The details of the boy's journey through the desolate landscape, rendered in Robertson's gentle rasp, are particularly stirring.

Members Reviews:

COMING OF AGE IN AN UNFORGIVING LANDSCAPE

I have to agree with one point made by the reviewer below -- Michael Meehan's darkly powerful novel is a difficult read. I can usually finish a book of this length in 2-3 days -- this one took me over a week. Upon reflection, after I completed the book, I believe that this effect might well have been part of the author's purpose in choosing the style in which he composed this work. His descriptions are intense and lenghty at times -- in many ways they are as relentless as the harsh environment in which the story takes place. They necessitate the reader taking a more leisurely pace. Things change slowly, imperceptably, in the Australian bush, and the style in which the novel is written hammers that home in the mind of the reader -- parallelling the way the characters' lives are pounded into shape by the forge, hammer and anvil of the world in which they live.

Set in the sparsely-settled Ausstralian bush country, THE SALT OF BROKEN TEARS is a heart-wrenching, moving coming-of-age story. The boy who is the focus of the novel -- we never learn his given name, and only toward the end of the book is even a nickname revealed -- lives on a farm with his parents, his sister, his silent aunt and a couple of motley workmen. One day, in the killing heat of the afternoon, seemingly out of a dusty whirlwind, a young woman wanders into the yard, clad only in a thin, torn dress. She is taken in by the family -- ostensibly on a temporary basis -- and soon becomes a fixture, touching the lives of everyone who lives there in ways they will not soon forget.

The girl -- Eileen -- is beautiful and alluring, a free spirit unlike anyone they have ever met. The boy's sister Hannah sees in her a friend and older sister for whom she has ached. Auntie Argie -- silent and believed lost in a world of her own for many years -- finds a kindness in Eileen's touch that brings back memories from her youth, full of joy and sadness and love. The mother eyes Eileen with suspicion and derides her for her 'loose ways' as a bad example for the children.