Ring of Salt: A Memoir of Finding Home and Hope on the Wild Coast of Ireland

Betsy Cornwell

Book cover for Ring of Salt: A Memoir of Finding Home and Hope on the Wild Coast of Ireland
Book cover for Ring of Salt: A Memoir of Finding Home and Hope on the Wild Coast of Ireland

Ring of Salt: A Memoir of Finding Home and Hope on the Wild Coast of Ireland

Ring of Salt: A Memoir of Finding Home and Hope on the Wild Coast of Ireland

Betsy Cornwell

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Description

Maid meets Under the Tuscan Sun in this inspiring and lyrical memoir about a writer and mother who flees an abusive marriage and must learn to reclaim the story of her life through a search for home on Ireland's wild, western coast.

At twenty-four, Betsy Cornwell runs away to Ireland for a fresh start. Leaving behind a painful past, she chases her dream of becoming a novelist to the misty shores of the Aran Islands. There she meets a handsome and charming horse trainer, and her life takes on the glow of a fairy tale when they elope to Gretna Green.

Five years later, her happy ending has twisted into a nightmare. Betsy is trapped in an abusive marriage, isolated and afraid with a newborn baby. On her son's first birthday, she must flee home again, this time turning to the women around her--her local survivor support group, a trusted family friend, and an online Smith College alumnae network--for help she'd never known she could ask for.

After a brush with homelessness, she struggles to scrape together a living for herself and her son. On sleepless nights, she scrolls through real estate listings that might as well be castles in the air, and starts to foster an impossible dream: What if she could use her writing to buy a home, one that no one could take away from her and her baby? One that might become a haven, not just for her family, but other single parent artists and writers, too?

When she discovers a historic knitting factory and former cinema on Ireland's rugged Connemara coastline, left empty and crumbling for years, that precarious dream becomes her lifeline. Over the next two years she works to crowdfund the old knitting factory's purchase by sharing its story and her own, in candid posts that range from the unexpectedly steep learning curves she encounters with home renovations and internet dating, to her heartbreaking fight to keep custody of her son, with her growing online community. But as the deadline to buy nears, she realizes she will have to reckon with everything she believes about family, survival, and what happily-ever-after truly means for her dream to have any chance of coming true.

Ring of Salt combines a powerful and relatable narrative of survivorship and healing with lush writing about the windswept landscapes and rich mythology of rural Ireland to craft a real-world fairy tale about the ordinary, but no less life-changing, forms of magic we can all access: vulnerability, community, and the power of telling your own story.

About the Author

Betsy Cornwell is a New York Times bestselling author of fantasy and historical novels for young people. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times's Modern Love, Fairy Tale Review, Parabola Magazine, and elsewhere. She received the Irish Writers Centre's first Blue Mountains (Australia) residency and a Markievicz Award for her work on this book. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Notre Dame and a BA from Smith College, and teaches at the University of Galway and Atlantic Technical University Sligo.

Critical Reviews

"Ring of Salt is so vast and tender and urgent, it's almost like reading a novel. I couldn't put it down. I haven't cheered for a heroine like Betsy in ages." --Jen Hatmaker, New York Times bestselling author of For the Love

"Betsy Cornwell has written a wondrous book. Free of the pitfalls of sentimental and saccharin prose one often sees in memoir, it is a book of resilience and fortitude, and a testament to the power of determined women. This book renewed something in my own heart. A beautiful tale of love, survival and community."
--Rachel Louise Snyder, author of No Visible Bruises and Women We Buried, Women We Burned

"When I grow up, I want to write like Betsy Cornwell! She's poetic and gritty and funny and heartbreaking. . . often in the same paragraph. Ring of Salt captures what it's like to rebuild from the ruins, to mother while mourning, and to find a safe home inside yourself when the world hasn't offered one. Cornwell doesn't mistake escape for freedom, and she writes beautifully about what comes after survival--the long, brave, often invisible work of building a new life. It's honest, lyrical, and quietly revolutionary." --Lara Love Hardin, New York Times bestselling author of The Many Lives of Mama Love

"Book clubs will pull Betsy Cornwell from these pages and into their circles in triumphant solidarity, rallying around her bravery, heralding her riveting story as one of their all-time favorites. I was rapt in anticipation through every turn, every moment of grit and grace in her journey. Ring of Salt is a lyrical, intimate account of self-empowerment, survival, and the intricate assembling of courage necessary to take your child by the hand and know that where you're going is more powerful than where you came from." --Carine McCandless, New York Times bestselling author of The Wild Truth

"Betsy Cornwell's Ring of Salt is a beautifully written story of resilience, hope and hard-earned triumph. In sentences that shimmer like the incandescent Irish coastline, Cornwell enriches our definitions of survivorship and shows us how she found magic in everyday life. Readers will cheer for her as she weaves together a community--both near and far--that rallies around her as she leaves the dark chapters of her past behind and builds an abundant life." --Christie Tate, New York Times bestselling author of Group and B.F.F.

"A powerful and deeply empowering book, Ring of Salt is a hymn to the strength of community, a rallying cry against systemic injustice, and a testimony to the resilience of one woman's spirit. Beautifully written, this is an immersive exploration into the joy of finding home in unconventional places." --Roisín O'Donnell, author of Nesting

"Ring of Salt is clear-eyed, open-hearted, and brimming with hope. As an artist, an ex-pat fleeing family violence, and an immigrant searching for a home in the world, Betsy Cornwell writes with urgency and candor, pulling readers along on her wild rollercoaster into love and heartbreak and out again. . . There are echoes here of ancient creation myths, of the timeless need for harmony with the natural world, and Cornwell's deep kinship with all the women, past and present, who have muscled a better life into existence for their children." --Anonymous, author of Becoming Duchess Goldblatt

Publishing Information

Publisher: Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster
Pub date: 2025-09-30
Length: 352 pages

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