What do young girls want? Adventure? Freedom? Love? Behind the mask of innocence, the desire to grow up drives Bee, and her best friend, Emmy, into the complex world their parents have found themselves.A childish prank forces Bee to begin a long journey of coming to terms, when both her older sister and Emmy's family, the Robichaux's, become deeply involved with a certain Harper, a manipulator and Evangelistic style cult leader, inspired by Jim Jones of the People's Templ and other cult leaders. Years later, Dr. Beatrice Leblanc (Bee) takes a job in a women's prison to absolve her deeply hidden guilt feelings and her shame. With Emmy's mother, Mérite-Lajoie, healer and swamp woman, now an inmate in Louisiana's State Prison for Women, Bee reflects on several crimes committed in the community many years before, involving herself and the other girls in the community. Thanks to Mérite-Lajoie's storytelling, readers will find themselves in 1963, in the littered trailer park near a swamp, part of a vanished Louisiana plantation, haunted by phantoms of the past. "He's after my lungs now! I mean the possum." Mérite-Lajoie stopped to catch her breath before continuing. "You see, Bee, it's my nightmare. There's this demon. He's been comin back for years. It's only a dream; I know that. Though, most of it happened for real, and I still cain't get it figured. Do you remember that year, Bee? You were eleven. I guess you'd be about forty-two now, like my Emmy. Do you remember the possum? Do you remember what Harper did? "These Beans Have Too Much Salt blends elements of southern literary fiction, psychological suspense, and cult crime that will keep you awake and wondering how it will all end. Do you enjoy stories about tough women in a tough world? Stories about Cajuns? Please step this way and watch out for the snakes!
