As Meat Loves Salt (Harvest Original)
With her first book,As Meat Loves Salt, Maria McCann joins a small, esteemed company of writers--Umberto Eco and Gore Vidal among them--whose historical novels are meticulously researched, politically acute, and rattling good reads.  Set in the 17th century, during the English civil war,As Meat Loves Saltfollows the misadventures of Jacob, born a gentleman but raised a servant, whose overdeveloped sense of personal dignity leads him from one crisis to another.  When the book opens, he is already a murderer.  Within a hundred pages he becomes a rapist and a thief.  All this is perfect training for a military career, and Jacob soon finds himself in Cromwell's New Model army and in thrall to a charismatic man named Ferris. "It was all pre-ordained," says Jacob later, when the men have deserted together, "there had never been a place where I could have leapt free of the net."  Rich with period detail, multilayered, and erotic, this is a big, delicious novel with a hint of crunchy intellection.  Expect a lost weekend.--Regina Marler