Deep Salt Water

Literary Nonfiction. Memoir. Biography. Winner of the 2017 KM Hunter Award for Literature. DEEP SALT WATER is a stirring memoir about loss and abortion, expressed through the layering of imagery from the ocean. In detail at once sensual and sophisticated, Apostolides unfurls the emotional experience of a love affair and unwanted pregnancy, the abortion itself, and her re-connection with the man seventeen years later--a rekindling of love which stimulates this gentle attempt to come to terms with the abortion and its consequences. Moving from a place of intense intimacy to an outward focus that engages with the broader world, DEEP SALT WATER discusses abortion in all its complexity, rejecting polarizing rhetoric in favour of the unfathomable truths that women hold in their bodies.

"DEEP SALT WATER is intimate and sensual, tidal and saline--how can a book be tidal and saline? These words make sense within the environment of the book. Apostolides's language is not of pristine nature but of the anthropocene, our current geologic age of bleached coral and oceans choking on plastics. In light of man-made climate catastrophe, learning this language takes on added urgency." --Jade Colbert