On a winter night, an eleven-year-old SalvÞor and her unmarried mother SigurlÔina disembark at the remote, run-down fishing village of ÔOseyri, where life is "lived in fish and consists of fish." The two struggle to make their way amidst the rough, salt-worn men of the town. After SigurlÔina's untimely death, SalvÞor pays for her funeral and walks home alone, precipitating her coming of age as a daring, strong-willed young woman who chops off her hair, earns her own wages, educates herself through political and philosophical texts, and soon becomes an advocate for the town's working class, organizing a local chapter of the seamen's union. A feminist coming-of-age tale, an elegy to the plight of the working class and the corrosive effects of social and economic inequality, and a poetic window into the arrival of modernity in a tiny industrial town, Salka Valka is a novel of epic proportions, living and breathing with its vibrant cast of characters, filled with tenderness, humor, and remarkable pathos.