I read through this book in a rush in two days. A combination of addictive plot and very short chapters made it almost impossible to set down. It centers about the lives of three black women- Thais, a prostitute living in Alexandria around the year 300 BCE; Mer, a slave on a Haiti sugar plantation in the late 1700s and Jeanne, a dance hall girl living in Paris in the 1850s. Their lives, loves, and tragedies are woven together by the occasional influence of a Ginen goddess, who goes by many names. She moves through an ethereal river of space time, the salt roads. Under her domain are blood, sweat, tears, semen and all salt water seas. Thais, Mer and Jeanne live in worlds that cannot ignore bodily functions. They all hunger, thirst, wept, work, ache, revel in sex and try to wring as much out of life as they can.