Taste of Salt: A Story of Modern Haiti is a novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 written by Frances Temple

Frances Temple

Frances Temple was a primary school teacher, a writer of award-winning children's stories and young adult novels and an illustrator. She was born August 15, 1945 in Washington, District of Columbia. She grew up in Virginia, France, and Vietnam...

, and published in 1992. It is set in Haiti

Haiti

Haiti , officially the Republic of Haiti , is a Caribbean country. It occupies the western, smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Ayiti was the indigenous Taíno or Amerindian name for the island...

, and although most of the characters and events are fictional, the background is real and Jean-Bertrand Aristide

Jean-Bertrand Aristide

Jean-Bertrand Aristide is a Haitian former Catholic priest and politician who served as Haiti's first democratically elected president. A proponent of liberation theology, Aristide was appointed to a parish in Port-au-Prince in 1982 after completing his studies...

is a real person. The story tells about a young boy, Djo, who is killed in a hospital bombing by the street gangsters, "Macoutes"

The story starts with Djo in the hospital. Jeremie, a girl send to tape Djo as he told his life story is send by Tidid. Djo talks about his life from the beginning since he was a child. The story continues with his various jobs, the poverty in Haiti, how Djo had to work as a slave.

The second part of the story has to do with Jeremie. Jeremie is a girl who has been educated in a nun school. She always wanted to work her way out of the slums of Haiti and live somewhere else. After she meets Djo and listens to his story, she realizes she must stay in Haiti and try to make Haiti a better place.