Author Besty Cornwell’s debut memoir Ring of Salt covers topics I’m not often drawn to: marriage, abuse, motherhood. This is due, in part, to the fact that I’m not married, I have no children, and I have not experienced domestic violence (which has become increasingly common: a 2023 statistic from the CDC estimates that 1 in 4 women will experience intimate partner violence). Because of my very different life experiences, I didn’t expect to connect with Cornwell’s memoir — though I turned out to be very wrong.
Before we begin, it’s impossible to discuss Ring of Salt without addressing the heaviness of its content, so here’s a CONTENT WARNING: this is a memoir about abuse and domestic violence. Though not graphically depicted, abuse — and the threat of it — are persistently present.
If you’re still with me: Ring of Salt spans the course of a decade. It begins in 2012 when Cornwell spends a summer working on Ireland’s Aran Islands, seeking to escape the childhood abuse in her past. What began as a temporary stay turns more permanent when Cornwell meets Tommy, a charming Irishman who works with horses. They fall in love and then marry, and Cornwell moves to Ireland. It sounds just like the fairytales that Cornwell writes.
Unfortunately, their happily-ever-after soon sours. As time passes, Tommy’s behavior becomes increasingly aggressive, and by the time Cornwell is pregnant, the marriage has escalated into abuse. Though she tries to make things work with Tommy, she flees the family home with her son Robin on his first birthday; from there, she must decide how to move forward, both as a writer and a mother, on Ireland’s rural western coast.
Thematically Ring of Salt weaves Irish folklore and history with feminism, motherhood, and survivorship. Without spoiling the ending, much of the latter half is devoted to the Old Knitting Factory, a historic building in Connemara in need of refurbishing — and that Cornwell hopes will, one day, be the first truly safe home for her and her son.
Bisexuality is not a primary focus in this book, though Cornwell is publicly out as bi. Queerness is explicitly mentioned a few times, mostly around Cornwell’s fiction writing. She is the author of six fantasy novels, many of which are queer retellings of fairytales and famous literature, such as her 2020 novel The Circus Rose, a queer retelling of Snow White, and her 2022 novel Reader, I Murdered Him, based on Jane Eyre. (In fact, she wrote both of these during the ten-year span covered by Ring of Salt!)
Outside of her writing work, Cornwell’s sexuality comes up, but briefly. Towards the middle of the memoir, she joins a queer dating app and also goes on a date with another bi woman. Though promising initially, the relationship does not progress. In that same chapter, Cornwell also meets Shay who, Cornwell shares to her close-knit alumni group, treats her like a queen. In many ways Shay is a foil for Tommy; the direct opposite of Tommy’s anger and aggression, Shay is a model for gentleness and support for both Cornwell herself and Robin.
Adjacently, Ring of Salt briefly touches on homophobia. In Chapter 20, Cornwell befriends a Carraroe woman who then ghosts Cornwell; though Cornwell never finds out why, she does note that it happened “when she found out I wrote queer-themed books” — an attitude not shared by others in Cornwell’s life. In that same chapter, she also mentions that her friend Aisling gives her a mug with “Love is love” printed on it. Bisexuality, then, is really mostly a backdrop in this book.
Instead of focusing on sexuality specifically, Ring of Salt intricately discusses folklore. For example, there are multiple discussions around the Celtic idea of time, which is more of a spiral than the traditional line. Cornwell describes it as a wheel with eight spokes, corresponding to eight holidays, something she finds inspiring and beautiful.
This idea alone is lovely and finely wrought, but towards the middle of the memoir, Cornwell dives a little deeper into the importance of these abstract concepts. Ruminating on the nature of stories, including the fairytales and folklore she often writes about, she shares, “We may not meet dragons or ravening wolves in our real lives — except that we do, in other shapes, and stories teach us how to defeat them.”
That, then, is the crux of Ring of Salt. It’s not simply a story about abuse, or survivorship, or motherhood, or any other single idea. The Celtic concept of time is, itself, irrelevant — unless it isn’t, to you. Unless it helps you conceptualize something, or motivates you to action. Though what speaks to each reader will be different — based on their own stories and folklores, both personal and cultural — passages such as this touch on the universality of the human condition. No matter how fantastical a story is, or how unrelated to your own life it may seem, an element of the story can still change you.
This lends an immediacy to Ring of Salt that transcends the individual subjects it addresses. This is a memoir that builds up its readers, in a sense. It offers a type of grounding, or maybe a promise: this, too, can teach you something about surviving in the world, if only you can recognize those “other shapes” and apply it.
Both gorgeous and heartbreaking in equal measure, Ring of Salt tells a difficult and tender story about rebuilding one’s life and heart after abuse. It’s well suited for adult readers prepared to engage with material that can at times be heavy, though it always spirals back to hope.