In A Taste of Salt, Wilson has painted an unsettling picture of time: time carried in a small chest faced with an archetypal circular design and the date 1810. Its dark contents resonate across the years from the Georgia frontier to a strange diner in small town Maine in 1967. In the chest are ordinary articles that testify to unspeakable events from the past: events that refuse to resign their hold on the present. Reconciliation with the past is at the heart of Wilson's novel: reconciliation that comes slowly and with difficulty for Wilson's characters. And even then it comes only momentarily. The irony of Wilson's tale is that the only character free of this struggle is a slave.