Salt in the Spine by Fenyx Maerie is a 157,000-word literary fiction novel that blends dissociative realism, Gothic trauma-lit, and the familiar, mundane horrors of simply surviving. Told through multiple POVs and written from the vantage point of survivors–of the system, of violence, of family, of disappearing into the cracks for being too quiet or too angry–the story follows the lives of two sisters, and a distant group of old friends making the barrio come alive in the way fireworks do before they burn.  

Salt in the Spine is a raw, haunting literary novel about survival, inherited violence, and the treacherous spaces between memory, truth, mental health, and the system.Through fragmented timelines, poetic prose, and unreliable narration, we witness salvation and damnation.

This is not a clean trauma narrative. It is blood in the water, and it is salt in the spine.