Ring of Salt: Finding home and hope on the Wild Coast of Ireland

A stunning memoir, intimate and vast at once. Ring of Salt is a story of human interactions - nurturing, sexual, supportive and destructive, which Cornwell captures in all their complexity, intensity and inconsistency. What I love is her refusal to simplify or polarise her experience. Instead, she wrangles with the messiness of human connection, of the twin pull of an abusive relationship, the exhilaration and exhaustion of parenting, the power and abjection of motherhood. Braver still, is her insistence on looking, face-on, at our material reliance, debunking the myth of the American Dream to remind us of our dependency on one another, our interconnectedness. This is a very special book

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

Ring of Salt is the best memoir I've read in years. Think 'Practical Magic' set on the Irish coast. As transportive as a fairytale, but as real as the Connemara wind on your face, every page pulses with the wild spirit of Ireland. This memoir is for anyone ready to believe in the power of resilience, reinvention, and the communities that catch us when we fall

Betsy Cornwell's Ring of Salt is the story of hard-earned triumph for a single mother who forges a path through childhood abuse, domestic violence, penury, and isolation to an abundant life on the wild coast of Ireland. Readers will cheer for Cornwell as she weaves together a community - both near and far - that rallies around her as she leaves the dark chapters of her past behind her. Invoking fairy tales and Irish mythology, Cornwell enriches our definitions of survivorship and shows us how she found ordinary magic in everyday life. Best of all, Cornwell's story of resilience and hope is beautifully written; each sentence shimmers like the incandescent Irish coastline.

A truly beautifully written, heart wrenching memoir that brings the power of community, and the power of women, to every page. This is a survivor's story, but it's also a fairytale, one of darkness and light that has the happiest of endings - an ending that, like the circle of life that Betsy Cornwell brings so viscerally to the page, is just the beginning. Betsy takes you with her on an incredible journey from the cloying damp of an isolated cottage, chill with her fear, to the warmth and sweetness of sun-ripened wild strawberries and stunning sunsets, her child in her arms every step of the way. Emotional, spellbinding, inspirational, Ring of Salt is a tour-de-force of a book.