Salou by Morenike McFaal
What's It About?
Salou finds an unexpected love while trying to untangle her past after waking up in a Paris hospital without her memory.Morenike McFaal’s debut novel Salou is a gem of a romantic thriller, global in its reach, fast-paced in its telling and all the while satisfying in its offering of characters who jump off the page with authenticity and purpose.
Doctor Salou Kassai is two years out of Paris School of Medicine and already runs Necker Hospital ICU’s neonatology unit. As the story opens, a serious accident causes her to lose her memory, much of her mobility and her ID.
She wakes up nameless and scared in a Paris hospital, first under the care of neurosurgeon Alexander Gardé de Soos and then his son Benjamin, a promising cerebrovascular neurosurgeon in his last year of residency. While striving to respect the rules that govern patient-doctor relationships, Benjamin — widowed for the last three years with a young daughter — is drawn to the beautiful Salou, and it is the unpredictable path of their relationship that feeds the heart of this novel.
Thrilling Story
The story spans three continents, taking place between October 2006 and 2009. In a brief prologue, Salou’s father, a physician at the World Health Organization, gets delayed on his way to work one morning amidst political protest in downtown Conakry, Guinea. As he seeks permission to take an injured woman to the hospital, one of the soldiers offers him a prescient warning: “Take her wherever you want, Doctor. It’s just a matter of time before we find you.” That sense of unease permeates the rest of the novel.
When Salou does not check in with her parents for her regular call it worries them enough to send her mother packing for Paris to search for her. But it takes days to get out of Conakry as increasing unrest empties foreign embassies and outgoing flights are booked.
In the search for Salou, her former boyfriend, American Paul Stewart, also enters the story. Paul works as an international correspondent, famous for his reporting on the Darfur conflict. He and Salou have split because Salou wanted a family and a husband who stayed around. Nonetheless, his African contacts play out as things get dire and insurgency leaders threaten even Salou herself.
Cultural Mosaic
Multiculturalism — the aim of protecting cultural diversity as varied cultures coexist — appears large in this novel, from the micro level of two families joined by a romance to the macro level of Guinean politics and international terrorism. Salou is Guinean-born, of the Fulani tribe, while Benjamin’s ancestry is European but with a California grandmother descended from the Apache tribe.
What Salou and Benjamin respect in each other — close ties with their immediate families and a desire to honor their ancestral roots — can also usurp their connection as they and their families struggle to trust someone from outside their own circle.
Having grown up and lived in Africa, Europe and the Americas herself, McFaal deftly paints a cornucopia of gorgeous settings that make our vast world feel like a more intimate place.
In France, we travel from a state-of-the-art Parisian hospital to a Neuilly-sur-Seine ocher-colored mansion surrounded by exotic oleander, lavender, olive and cypress trees to a bucolic 13th-century monastery in the Loire Valley. In Africa, we become immersed in the vibrant colors and chaotic crowds of Conakry’s Marché Madina market and then get lost in the pastoral solitude of Koundara, a Guinean village where Salou’s Fulani grandfather is chief. San Francisco’s stark Alcatraz Island brings us full circle around the globe, as for Salou Alcatraz mirrors Africa’s House of Slaves, the infamous site off the Senegalese coast on the tiny island of Goree that served in the 18th century as the point of departure for African victims sold into slavery in the Americas.
Delightful Journey
Salou is an exceptional read, of the sort that does not come along often and is well worth the journey. From the complexity of crafting blended families to the threat of political terrorism that concerns us all no matter where we live, the story offers a realistic yet positive clarity.
We delight in how creative out-of-the-box solutions crafted within an African jungle can still honor what each person holds most dear. McFaal both tells and shows how love and persistence forge not just a more durable blended culture but a shared humor in the process and a willingness to weather whatever comes with fortitude and courage.
About Morenike McFaal:
Morenike McFaal was born in Benin, a small country nestled on the West Coast of Africa. As a result of her father’s career as a physician with the World Health Organization (WHO), she grew up living all over the world, from Africa, to Europe, and to the Americas. She has worked for years as a Simultaneous Conference Interpreter for United-Nations agencies before embracing a new passion as a novelist. She holds a Master of Science in Bioethics from Columbia University, and MFA in fiction writing from Wilkes University and is currently completing her Doctorate in Medicine, to become a neonatologist.
In addition to managing her dual careers, Morenike joggles multiple activities across three continents — writing, watching movies, designing fashion, listening to music, traveling, and spending time with her family.
