Salt of the Earth

Tunica County, Mississippi. 1933.

Ezra Tucker and Clem Ellis were never meant to be friends. But when hard times hit harder, the land draws them together. With backs bent to the same rows, they build more than an irrigation rig-they build trust. And when illness strikes Clem's beloved Lizzie, that trust is tested by sorrow, sacrifice, and the sacred weight of grief.

In a time of drought, despair, and dwindling hope, two men-one black, one white-fight to keep their families, their faith, and their dignity alive. Salt of the Earth is a tender, unflinching portrait of survival in the Mississippi Delta, where the soil is black and the burdens are shared.

Told in lyrical prose with the quiet grace of a Southern hymn, Salt of the Earth is a story of neighbors, labor, and the kind of faith that doesn't shout, but endures. A celebration of common dignity, this novella reminds us that some things bend, but some things hold-and the salt never leaves the soil it's been buried in.

Author Bio:

Romer Shaw was born in New Orleans, raised on stories older than the soil, and called-again and again-back to the Mississippi Delta.

His roots stretch through generations of Mississippi blood, but it's more than lineage that binds him to that land. It's a pull. A presence. Something spiritual. As if the alluvial earth itself had a claim on his soul.

Writing in the tradition of Faulkner, Baldwin, Woodrell, and Mosley, Romer crafts Southern Gothic stories soaked in memory, fire, and moral reckoning. His work centers the Delta-its ghosts, its heat, its brutal beauty-as both character and curse.

He now lives in Northwest Montana, where the mountains keep their own kind of silence-but the Delta still speaks. Always.