Bookwild

When What We Inherit Haunts Us: Deena Helm's Our Cut of Salt

Episode Notes

This week, I talk with Deena Helm about her debut literary horror novel Our Cut of Salt!

Listen to hear about:

• How Deena Helm turned a haunted house into a living embodiment of history, memory, and inherited trauma.
• Why Our Cut of Salt follows three generations of Palestinian women, and how trauma changes the relationships between mothers and daughters across decades. 
• The tension between preserving family history and being consumed by it—and what happens when younger generations want answers their elders may not be ready to give. 
• Why Deena chose horror to explore real historical violence, and how genre fiction can make readers connect emotionally with experiences far outside their own. 
• How Deena approached the novel’s most painful scenes, balancing the need to show the reality of violence without sanitizing it or turning suffering into spectacle.