Description

"[He] came to us through an advertisement that I had in desperation put in the newspaper." It began captivatingly for those days: "Two American ladies wish..." It was these lines in The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book that inspired The Book of Salt.

In Paris, 1934, B├1/4nh has accompanied his employers, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, to the train station for their departure to America. His own destination is unclear: will he go with "the Steins," stay in France, or return to his native Vietnam?

B├1/4nh has fled his homeland in disgrace, leaving behind his malevolent charlatan of a father and his self-sacrificing mother. For five years, he has been the live-in cook at the famous apartment at 27 rue de Fleurus. Before B├1/4nh's decision is revealed, his mesmerizing narrative catapults us back to his youth in French-colonized Vietnam, his years as a galley hand at sea, and his days turning out fragrant repasts for the doyennes of the lost generation.