Betsy Cornwell launches "Ring of Salt," in conversation with Kate Broad

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Lofty Pigeon Books

"This book renewed something in my own heart. A beautiful tale of love, survival and community.”
—Rachel Louise Snyder

Lofty Pigeon Books, Church Avenue, Brooklyn, NY, USA

<h3>Join us for the launch of Ring of Salt, Betsy Cornwell's inspiring and lyrical memoir about writing, motherhood, and reclaiming the story of her life through a search for home on Ireland’s wild, western coast.</h3>Author Betsy Cornwell will be joined by writer and illustrator Lisa Anchin for a reading, conversation, and reception.<a href="https://shop.loftypigeonbooks.com/item/gQpiPqSJBXjhST4qIQOhZg" title="https://shop.loftypigeonbooks.com/item/gQpiPqSJBXjhST4qIQOhZg" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Preorder your copy of Ring of Salt here!</a>Can't make it to the event? Preorder at the link above to receive a signed copy for store pickup or shipping. Indicate any personalization requests in the "instructions and comments" field during checkout. <h3>About the book</h3>At twenty-four, Betsy Cornwell runs away to Ireland for a fresh start. Leaving behind a painful past, she chases her dream of becoming a novelist to the misty shores of the Aran Islands. There she meets a handsome and charming horse trainer, and her life takes on the glow of a fairy tale when they elope to Gretna Green.Five years later, her happy ending has twisted into a nightmare. Betsy is trapped in an abusive marriage, isolated and afraid with a newborn baby. On her son’s first birthday, she must flee home again, this time turning to the women around her—her local survivor support group, a trusted family friend, and an online Smith College alumnae network—for help she’d never known she could ask for.After a brush with homelessness, she struggles to scrape together a living for herself and her son. On sleepless nights, she scrolls through real estate listings that might as well be castles in the air, and starts to foster an impossible dream: What if she could use her writing to buy a home, one that no one could take away from her and her baby? One that might become a haven, not just for her family, but other single parent artists and writers, too?When she discovers a historic knitting factory and former cinema on Ireland’s rugged Connemara coastline, left empty and crumbling for years, that precarious dream becomes her lifeline. Over the next two years she works to crowdfund the old knitting factory’s purchase by sharing its story and her own, in candid posts that range from the unexpectedly steep learning curves she encounters with home renovations and internet dating, to her heartbreaking fight to keep custody of her son, with her growing online community. But as the deadline to buy nears, she realizes she will have to reckon with everything she believes about family, survival, and what happily-ever-after truly means for her dream to have any chance of coming true.Ring of Salt combines a powerful and relatable narrative of survivorship and healing with lush writing about the windswept landscapes and rich mythology of rural Ireland to craft a real-world fairy tale about the ordinary, but no less life-changing, forms of magic we can all access: vulnerability, community, and the power of telling your own story.Advanced Praise for Ring of Salt"Ring of Salt is so vast and tender and urgent, it’s almost like reading a novel. I couldn’t put it down. I haven’t cheered for a heroine like Betsy in ages.” —Jen Hatmaker, New York Times bestselling author of For the Love“Betsy Cornwell has written a wondrous book. Free of the pitfalls of sentimental and saccharin prose one often sees in memoir, it is a book of resilience and fortitude, and a testament to the power of determined women. This book renewed something in my own heart. A beautiful tale of love, survival and community.” —Rachel Louise Snyder, author of No Visible Bruises and Women We Buried, Women We Burned“When I grow up, I want to write like Betsy Cornwell! She's poetic and gritty and funny and heartbreaking. . . often in the same paragraph. Ring of Salt captures what it’s like to rebuild from the ruins, to mother while mourning, and to find a safe home inside yourself when the world hasn’t offered one. Cornwell doesn’t mistake escape for freedom, and she writes beautifully about what comes after survival—the long, brave, often invisible work of building a new life. It’s honest, lyrical, and quietly revolutionary.” —Lara Love Hardin, New York Times bestselling author of The Many Lives of Mama Love“Book clubs will pull Betsy Cornwell from these pages and into their circles in triumphant solidarity, rallying around her bravery, heralding her riveting story as one of their all-time favorites. I was rapt in anticipation through every turn, every moment of grit and grace in her journey. Ring of Salt is a lyrical, intimate account of self-empowerment, survival, and the intricate assembling of courage necessary to take your child by the hand and know that where you're going is more powerful than where you came from." —Carine McCandless, New York Times bestselling author of The Wild Truth <h3>About the author</h3>Betsy Cornwell is a New York Times bestselling author of fantasy and historical novels for young people. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times’s Modern Love, Fairy Tale Review, Parabola Magazine, and elsewhere. She received the Irish Writers Centre’s first Blue Mountains (Australia) residency and a Markievicz Award for her work on this book. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Notre Dame and a BA from Smith College, and teaches at the University of Galway and Atlantic Technical University Sligo. <h3>About Kate Broad</h3>Kate Broad holds a BA from Wellesley College and a PhD in English from the CUNY Graduate Center. She is a Bronx Council on the Arts award winner for fiction and her writing has appeared in The Rumpus, No Tokens, Electric Literature, LitHub, The Brooklyn Review, and elsewhere. Her debut novel, Greenwich, was released in 2025 from St. Martin's Press and was named one of People Magazine's Best New Books, a Vanity Fair Summer Read, and an Amazon Editor's Pick for Best New Literature and Fiction. Originally from Massachusetts, she lives in the Bronx.

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Betsy Cornwell launches "Ring of Salt," in conversation with Kate Broad

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Betsy Cornwell launches "Ring of Salt," in conversation with Kate Broad

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