candikat 's review for:

Salt Bones by Jennifer Givhan

5.0

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Salt Bones is a riveting mystery of lost girls filled with folklore, generational trauma, family secrets, and class politics in the California desert. Billed as a retelling of the Persephone and Demeter myth, Givhan’s world- and character-building blended with magical realism incorporating the Mexicali myths of El Chupacabra and La Siguanaba creates a new myth. Givhan takes care to invest the reader  in Mal and her family and when her youngest daughter Amar goes missing - just like Mal’s sister Elena 25 years earlier - it became impossible to stop reading before learning whether Amar would be another victim of what Mal has become convinced is a family curse and whether what is haunting them is a supernatural or human monster.