The Pacific Ocean is a big thing to steal, and Quietly's roommate Imani never does anything small. But then Imani goes and dies, and Quietly is left to travel to the Under-Ath, with angry gods at her heels, to clean up the mess Imani left behind and try to rescue her friend.
Rachael K. Jones’s novella Every River Runs to Salt is a...story of friendship, love and katabasis set in a version of Athens, Ga., where a woman can have a glacier for an ancestor and steal an ocean on a whim ... The prose is gorgeous, and the specificity of place is an enjoyable counterpoint to the mythic vastness of a story about traveling to the underworld ... I found the final part a bit crowded with new characters and developments, but was still riveted by the experience, the luminous storytelling and Quietly’s devoted determination.
Jones turns ideas and metaphors into living, breathing characters. She designs an underbelly to a university town that’s both underworld and a chance for redemption, maybe in the same breath ... For the sheer beauty of the prose, and for the reinvention of American mythology, Every River Runs To Salt is well worth the read.
