Above the Salt

Starred review from August 28, 2023
Vaz (Mariana) draws on the real-life story of Portuguese immigrant and Civil War veteran John Alves for a sprawling yet intimate epic of persecution, reinvention, and romance. After surviving imprisonment for heresy with his Presbyterian mother on the Portuguese island of Madeira in the 1840s, five-year-old John meets Maria Freitas, an adoptee raised by a Catholic gardener sympathetic to the country’s marginalized Protestants. Their brief childhood friendship flares back to life when the two are reacquainted as adults in 1860 Illinois. Maria, now Mary, is reluctantly engaged to a botany professor and trying to find a market for the miracle berry plants she and her father brought to America. John teaches at a school for the Deaf and is working on a machine he hopes will record sound. Under the looming threat of war and faced with religious and social obstacles, John and Mary pursue a love that will reverberate through the rest of their lives. In lyrical prose, Vaz conveys her characters’ curiosity about the world’s beauty (“They hauled blankets out where the stars were like knots on the back of satin that God and all the dead were stitching; what handiwork was on the other side?”) and doles out powerful observations on human nature, such as this description of a businessman trying to hustle Mary: “His paper-thin skin advertised his bones. Men like this resembled their own memento mori, and yet they never saw it.” Readers will be entranced by this ambitious and heartbreaking saga. Agent: Ellen Levine, Trident Media Group.

September 15, 2023
Vaz follows star-crossed 19th-century lovers over eight decades and two continents as their personal crises intersect with Portuguese and American history. Poetic language creates a dreamy, over-the-top atmosphere in which "air sighed like a church organ's coda" for this sweeping saga of thwarted love overstuffed with characters and events. Over and over, soul mates John Alves and Mary Freitas reunite only to separate. Unlucky timing, world events, and meddling by mean-spirited acquaintances are the main culprits, although the lovers' impetuous choices also play a role. They first bond as children in 1846 on the Portuguese island of Madeira shortly before local Catholics violently attack Protestant converts; John's family are converts who must flee, Mary's father a Catholic whose religious tolerance gets him in trouble. When they next meet in 1860 Illinois, Mary, not yet 21, is engaged to another man. Edward Moore is a wealthy American 10 years Mary's senior who has employed her to run his greenhouse. While John is the novel's leading man, a model of rectitude and unwavering passion, Edward is more complicated and therefore more endearing. His sense of privilege and social awkwardness is offset by self-awareness, sensitivity, broadmindedness, and progressive attitudes--for instance, he pays Mary as much as a man. Mary's passion for John survives dramatic events--phony letters designed to tear them apart, parental disapproval, the mistaken belief he has died--but is never tested by actual daily life together. Edward and Mary push and pull each other in their professional as well as their emotional partnership. While she always adores and idealizes John, Mary underestimates Edward for years. The love triangle plays out against the backdrop of history. The Civil War and the San Francisco earthquake play disruptive roles, and Lincoln is one of many historic figures with whom the characters interact. Operatic, sometimes soap operatic, and memorably vivid.

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October 1, 2023
On the island of Madeira in the 1840s, when Jo�o (John) Alves and his mother are jailed without food to starve out their Presbyterian faith, his indomitable mother notes they will "feed on birdsong." John and his family eventually escape persecution, immigrating first to New York City and then Illinois. Meanwhile, fellow Madeiran and love of John's young life, Maria (Mary), also ends up in the U.S., working with her brilliant gardener father for a rich botanist. When the lovers are reunited, their attachment seems depthless, but Mary's relationship with the botanist, the machinations of unknown malefactors, and the Civil War separate them. Based on a 1920 newspaper interview with the real John Alves, the novel's title derives from encounters with the Lincoln family, when John was seated "above the salt" at dinner. Focus on the Protestant Portuguese's exile from Madeira--also key to Nancy Horan's The House of Lincoln (2023)--creates a fascinating framework for this episodic yet sweeping literary novel that is equal parts love story and immigrant experience, showcasing America's "endless space and promise," where "large people were obsessed with large dreams."

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

December 2, 2023

Vaz (Saudade) pulls from her heritage to write a passionate, poetic Portuguese American journey with a dash of magical realism. Maria and John meet in Portugal in the 1840s as children and are immediately drawn to each other. Maria's father is a master botanist who has passed on his talents to his daughter, who is also a gifted embroiderer. John's mother is a religious zealot who puts John in danger for her beliefs. When the two meet again as refugees in a Portuguese enclave in Illinois, Maria's beauty has captivated a wealthy man, and both she and John have strong political beliefs that lead to them spending time with Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln before his presidency. John becomes a beloved teacher for the Deaf, and then fights in the Civil War; Maria marries and tries to find her place in American society. The draw between them never ceases, despite the fates seeming to keep them apart. VERDICT Overblown writing and an occasionally lagging plot detract from the story. However, this romantic immigrants' epic novel does capture the depth of the Portuguese experience at a tipping point in American history.--Beth Liebman Gibbs

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