GC: Isabel, tell me about the title. Why Salt?

IZ: Originally, the working title was Anna and John, convenient — but uninspired. I went through a long list of titles before I read Kay Byer’s poem sequence, “Salt Woman.” In talking to Kay, I was particularly taken by what she said about its mythical symbolism for wisdom. As luck would have it, there is another book out at the present (non-fiction) with the same title. Bad timing!

GC: For me, Salt contains themes that also occur in two of my favorite books: Cold Mountain and Lamb in His Bosom. I’m referring to the contrast between abiding or eternal aspect of Nature in contrast to the briefness of human existence.

IZ: I’m not familiar with Lamb in His Bosom, but Cold Mountain is one of my favorite books. I wish I thought the mountains would abide, but I see them being destroyed before my eyes — and I am increasingly uneasy about what human beings are doing even to the seasons themselves. Perhaps that is why I set my own book over one hundred years ago. Even then the changes had already begun. Wolves and bears hunted down, fish depleted, land cleared. We have a lot to answer for, brief though our destructive little lives may be.

GC: If I had to pick a dominant theme in Salt, I would pick the theme of sexual imperatives. You treat sexuality with a kind of straightforward exuberance, but there is also the suggestion that we are at the mercy of sex.

IZ: I think you hit the nail on the head. Irresistible carnal desire does drive many of the twists and turns of the plot, and causes John and Anna’s marriage, of course.

GC: Would you comment on John’s character? I found him willful, ambitious and controlling. I’m not sure I liked him.

IZ: For John, the determining event that he is reminded of over and over is the early death of his father and his own failure to carry out his father’s “last charge.” If we add hardship and the loss of two wives, you have a man with underlying insecurities that can lead to a desperate need to dominate and control. He is far from a complete villain. He would not have attracted Anna without some redeeming qualities, and in some ways she succeeds in bringing out the best in him.

GC: Well, I certainly recognized the geographical locations in Salt. Boone, Globe, Valle Crucis, Bristol, Mountain City. Is it possible that some of the characters are based on “real people”?

IZ: The “framework,” the time line of the story is based on my father’s family, but that provided only the pegs upon which the story is hung. The characters are either “created” from research, assembled as composites or totally imaginary.

GC: Salt has a kind of mystical theme running throughout it that takes the form of premonitions, a kind of foreshadowing.

IZ: While the “reality” of this novel has been commented on, the supernatural is very present. Most prevalent is the fact that a number of characters sense a presence — the Native Americans who once lived here, or guardian spirits. There are obvious agents like the Tarot cards that Anna encounters in Boone and the gypsy that she meets near the end of the book. I love the idea of supernatural visitations.

GC: How do you account for the remarkable reality of your descriptions of nature?

IZ: I found myself at the Hambridge Center in north Georgia for a month at a time of year when no one else was there. I was all alone in 600 acres of wilderness with the bears and the catamounts and not another light to be seen anywhere. Sitting in the yard in the middle of the night and seeing the Milky Way for the first time in years was inspirational. The stars were so bright their light actually woke me up one morning when I had not closed the blinds. This was my most productive writing time ever.

GC: Salt seems poised between two worlds, and Anna’s life moves between them: kerosene lamps vs. electric lights, fireplaces vs. cook stoves, mules vs. automobiles. Do you feel that we have lost something vital in progressing from one to the other?

IZ: As a child, I romanticized the past and begged my father to tell me “something old-timey,” but I would not want to go back to that time — to poverty, prejudice, inferior medical care. Even so, I know full well that much has been lost in terms of invaluable connections with the land and the community. There is a quote from my introduction to the poems about my father (“Winter Exile”) that sums this up: I hope (these poems) will also honor a lost way of life that, while it was rock hard and often painful, was also beautiful, moving and satisfying in a way that we may not be able to recover.”