Salthill: A Novel

by Judith Barnes

Overview

Judith Barnes has written a lush and compelling historical novel about family and relationships, love and rage, loyalty and betrayal, all set against the beautiful backdrop of the Canadian wilderness and the ranching life.

One evening in 1946, a hungry stranger joins the family at Salthill, a horse ranch in the Skillihawk Valley in British Columbia. Grey St. Oegger welcomes the young African-American, who gives his name as simply Harris, in for a meal. But after dinner, when he sees Harris's affinity for horses, he extends that welcome indefinitely, offering Harris a job and a place to live.

Over the next five years, Harris seems to settle in at Salthill, becoming a partner and nearly a son to Grey, who breeds and trains horses while raising his two daughters and his son. Harris even buys a horse of his own, a magnificent but temperamental creature they call the Red. But even Grey sees a rage in Harris, simmering like the Red's own wild streak below Harris's quiet exterior. None of the St. Oeggers know much about him or what he really wants. For the more he becomes part of the family, the more an explosion seems inevitable-especially once Elsa, Grey's youngest daughter, returns from school a headstrong and beautiful young woman and turns her eye on Harris.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781466839595
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	11/01/2003
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	368
File size:	541 KB

About the Author

Judith Barnes has traveled extensively throughout the world, and lived in Canada for two years. She was born, raised, and still lives in Los Angeles, California. Salthill is her first novel.
Judith Barnes has traveled extensively throughout the world, and lived in Canada for two years. She was born, raised, and still lives in Los Angeles, California. Salthill is her first novel.

Editorial Reviews

Barnes's debut novel spans the years 1946 to 1957, chronicling the life of Garnet Harris and his struggle for acceptance in the rugged Canadian west. An African-American gifted at handling horses, Harris heads north to escape poverty, drug addiction and the savage, debilitating racism of the American South. Arriving hungry and penniless at Salthill, a ranch in British Columbia, he is befriended by Grey St. Oegger, the ranch's expatriate Englishman owner. Though both are guarded men, they bond over their love of horses and honest labor. Then St. Oegger's youngest daughter, free-spirited and passionate Elsa, falls in love with Harris, complicating life at Salthill. She and Harris begin a turbulent, clandestine affair that ends when Harris flees the ranch, knowing he has betrayed St. Oegger's trust. The story is already melodramatic enough, laden with overripe imagery and an excess of figurative language, but the passages about Harris's subsequent self-induced exile and wanderings take it over the top. Despite the often graphic scenes detailing intolerant attitudes toward blacks, Barnes's attempts to explore Harris's past and the insidious effects of racism are uneven and ambivalent: a fresher perspective on prejudice would have lent the novel greater depth. Barnes has talent-as evidenced by her sharp, informative descriptions of horses, ranch life and the natural wonders of the Canadian landscape-but her debut would've benefited from a tighter hand on the reins. (Oct. 7) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Galloping melodrama about a tormented horse-trainer.

It’s 1946 when Colonel Grey St. Oegger, owner of Salthill, a horse ranch in British Columbia, befriends a young black drifter known only as Harris and lets him work as a stablehand. Ere long, Harris’s talent for taming difficult horses becomes evident, though he can scarcely control his own vicious temper and Grey soon must rescue him from a violent brawl with a neighboring rancher who calls him a nigger. Yet he lets Harris stay, out of misplaced kindness and misguided fascination with the unremitting hostility of the younger man. Clearly Harris is hiding a terrible secret—and how did he get that gruesome scar on his face, not to mention the faint needle-puncture marks on the inside of his elbow and the slash marks on his wrists, and . . . . Well, on to sunny pastures, where Grey’s daughters Flavia and Elsa ride about in girlish innocence, though headstrong Elsa is inexorably drawn to her father’s brooding hired man. All look on in awe as the mysterious Harris sulks and fumes, though he does find a stalwart friend in a Klaxta Indian woman, Sno-Bird, whose dialogue is rendered in excruciating pidgin ("We most strong tribe this land. Once great numbers, many gone now. You African mens lucky, they say you brought here"). But Harris doesn’t consider himself particularly lucky, considering that not so long ago he barely survived a brutal whipping and attempted lynching at the hands of white racists in Georgia. Still, there is the alluring Elsa, who just can’t resist him and is soon pregnant with his child. All these hidden conflicts and seething passions explode, of course, followed by a most unlikely happy ending.

An overwrought stylethat never lets up, and a first-novelist who can’t resist romantic metaphors (eyes are like "lapis lazuli," hair is "berry-dark" and "berry-sweet," etc.). Just too much.

Kirkus Reviews