Mer" (pg. 65). The subject of salt roads reappears throughout the novel; the roads are the spiritual connection between the Ginen and their African deities (like Lasirén). By extension, the drying up of the salt roads represents the loss of connection between the enslaved Africans and their heritage. Mer struggles throughout the novel to understand how she can fix these salt roads, and it is understood that freeing the Ginen depends heavily upon the preservation of their roots via maintenance of the salt roads. If The Salt Roads is a story of freeing, in one interpretation or another, the Ginen, its title represents the key to that struggle. Plot overview The Salt Roads tells a story of the Ginen fertility god, Lasirén. Lasirén moves through both the ethereal space of the Loa and the physical space of humans. She often does the latter by possession of the bodies of other characters, especially females. While inhabiting them for varying periods of time, Lasirén helps the three main human characters find their place(s) in the world, and she influences their lives and the outcomes of their decisions through direct and indirect means. The novel weaves together the stories of the three women with the common thread of Lasirén's consciousness and her efforts to help the Ginen's struggle for freedom. The novel begins with the introduction of Mer, a slave and healer on a sugar plantation in St. Domingue. In the opening chapter, Mer and her helper/lover Tipingee deliver the stillborn child of a slave woman named Georgine. The three women later bury the body at the edge of a nearby river, and their songs and prayers deliver Lasirén into being. Lasirén subsequently appears to Mer to inform her that the salt roads are drying up, and tasks Mer with clearing them. This task underpins the majority of Mer's story - her struggles to both understand and undertake the work of clearing Lasirén's path to the minds of the Ginen drive the progression and development of the novel's plot during her lifetime. As the Haitian slaves around her begin to rally against the "backra" (white slave owners), called to violent revolution by the demagogue Makandal, Mer struggles for a more peaceful path to freedom. Her service to Lasirén puts Mer at odds with Makandal's method of obtaining freedom, and Mer's eventual possession by Lasirén at a key point in the story results in