Salt Dancers by Ursula Hegi

On her fourth birthday, Julia Ives father lays a line of salt on the floor. He tells her to step over the salt and leave all the bad memories behind. She should carry forth into the new year only the experiences she wants to keep. Thirty-seven years later, she finds herself successful, single and pregnant and wanting to reconnect with the father she has not seen in twenty-three years. As she ponders her return, we learn of the cruel treatment she received at the hand of her father following her mother's abandonment of the family. But it seems like the story she carries with her in her memory is only one way for the facts to be understood. Julie longs for the easy four-year-old step across the salt but is confronted with a few more complicated choices of what to leave behind and what to carry forth.