Lucy is lost. Growing up in the north east she wanted more. When others were thinking about the Nissan factory or call centres she was thinking about Pete Doherty, poetry and the possibilities London seemed to offer. University was the way out, her ticket to the promised land where shed become a shinier version of herself, where her nights would be gigs and parties and long exciting conversations about Judith Butler.But once she gets there Lucy cant help feeling that the big city isnt for her, and once again she is striving, only this time its for the right words, the right clothes, the right foods. No matter what she tries shes not right. Until she is. In that last year of her degree the city opens up to her, she is saying the right things, doing the right things. Until her parents visit for her graduation and events show her that her life has always been about pretending and now shes lost all sense of who she is and what shes supposed to be doing.And so Lucy packs up her things and leaves again, this time for her dead Irish grandfathers stone cottage in a remote part of Donegal. There, alone, she sets about piecing together her history hoping that in confronting where she came from she will know where she should be going. Saltwater is a novel about growing up, about class, about how where we come from shapes who we become, and about the aimless periods we all go through. And its about the north east, mothers and daughters, history and pre-destiny.