Salt Bones

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.

She 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.

Thank you to NetGalley and Mulholland Books for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review. Pub. date: 7/22/25

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