Read An Excerpt From 'Salvación' by Sandra Proudman

In this Latinx YA fantasy inspired by El Zorro, Lola de La Peña becomes the masked heroine Salvación in order to save her family and town from a man who would destroy it for the magic it contains…if she doesn’t fall in love with a boy in his company first.

Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Sandra Proudman’s Salvación, which is out May 20th 2025.

Lola de La Peña yearns to be free from the societal expectations of a young Mexican lady of her station. She spends her days pretending to be delicate and proper while watching her mamá cure the sick and injured with sal negra (black salt), a recently discovered magic that heals even the most mortal of sicknesses and wounds. But by night, she is Salvación, the free-spirit lady vigilante protecting the town of Coloma from those who threaten its peace and safety among the rising tension in Alta California after the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

But one night, a woman races into Coloma, barely alive, to tell the horrifying tale of how her town was obliterated by sal roja (red salt), a potent, deadly magic capable of obliterating anything it comes into contact with, and about the man who wields it: Damien Hernández. So when Hernández arrives the next day with a party of fifty strong and promises of returning Alta California to México, Lola knows it’s only a matter of time before he brings the region under his rule—all Hernández needs is the next full moon and the stolen, ancient amulet he carries to mine enough sal roja to conquer the land. Determined to protect everything she loves, Lola races against time as Salvación to stop his plans. What she didn’t count on was the distracting and infuriating Alejandro, who travels with Hernández but doesn’t seem to share his ambitions. With the stakes higher than ever and Hernández getting closer to his goals, Lola will do anything to foil his plans, even teaming up with Alejandro—who she doesn’t fully trust but can’t help but fall in love with.

CHAPTER 1

The line of people waiting for un milagro stretched into the endless rolling green hills of the midsummer Alta California horizon. I watched from where Mamá and I sat outdoors on a couple of plain wooden chairs facing the newly empty stool at the front of la fila.

At midday, the sun shone directly on the spot Mamá had chosen for us upon our arrival in Coloma, a glade surrounded by tall pine trees, with a view of a calm river. We had set up halfway between our claim, where my brother and father mined sal negra, and the outskirts of town. Despite the sun shining on this spot for hours, it felt like bad luck to abandon it now.

In this place, Mamá had used sal negra on herself to reveal its magic to us, and it was here that Mamá and I—two women in flowing dresses, a barrel for sal behind us, a pail of it between us, our house visible off in the distance—had been healing the sick ever since.

“Loli, más sal,” Mamá said, patting me roughly on the forearm, diverting my attention from the others. Her tone was firm but tired as always as she wiped beads of sweat from her wrinkled brow and underneath her straw bonnet.

I grunted, a bit tired myself after a late night out. Then I set my cross-stitch down on the rim of my chair, acting as if the heat of the day made it hard to breathe instead of how tight Mamá had made the bodice of my dress this morning. I hurried toward a barrel to the right of Mamá that had once contained liquor and now held magia. The more people who lined up, the shorter the rope of Mamá’s temper. And she always hated when I paid them too much attention.

It was my parents’ wish that I feign a lack of interest in sal—or in Mamá as a curandera generally. I was just a girl minding my needlework, no real threat to someone who might want to take the sal from us. My job was to survive. I was here with Mamá only because my parents didn’t want me home alone. And they didn’t want me helping at the mines either.

Of course, I paid close attention to every miracle Mamá performed, and in the darkness of night, in my own way, I did help.

When I returned to Mamá, old man Álvaro was next in line. I’d been following his story for three days as he advanced to the front. His journey here became all anyone seemed to talk about. Blind, el viejito had traveled 150 miles on foot, accompanied by two of his eight children, the ones now leading him forward to the vacant chair.

Voluminous clothing hung from their bodies in tatters, ruined materials of fine linen and cotton now the only evidence of noble blood. Faces covered in dirt and grime bore the same dark circles around the eyes. The siblings dragged their feet as if hurting with every blistered step. Don Álvaro could barely walk with their aid. But they’d made it, survived the trek and endured the wait. Don Álvaro y familia had earned the right to the sal negra from our claim and to the miracle we shared with everyone who came to us.

Mamá welcomed the three travelers with her usual worn-out smile. She hadn’t stopped working since we arrived in Coloma three months back, not even for a day. And she didn’t eye the long line as I did or see how endless it was when every day brought more people. Three months ago, despite our own grueling trek, Mamá had been full of energy.

The line moved forward, and people in it continued to chatter away. There was a lull now—almost comforting, like the sound of grillos at night.

Before Mamá, the sal negra was going to be sold as black table salt, a minor commodity. Before Mamá, nobody had realized what it was they were really sent to find, what Abuelo had invested in because Mamá told him to. Despite the war, he dispatched dozens of men out here on his daughter’s whim; he financed our entire voyage—and the venture had paid off. We were able to send word back to Abuelo that la magia was real. Mamá had been right.

Magia—for the very first time, evidence of real magic in our world.

And now … the plan was to mine as much sal negra as possible before the white man came to claim it for himself, the same way he had done with our lands. We’d lost the war. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed. Abuelo urged us to hurry home before Alta California got too dangerous.

The dark circles around Mamá’s eyes never disappeared, and she was starting to develop a hunch from leaning over the sick and the injured all day. The sal negra she herself took never seemed to heal it. If she would only let me help, outside of bringing her more sal. But no.

Stay out of the way. That was all she wanted me to do—her and Papá, and sometimes I thought even my brother, Víctor. I had to pretend that I was weak and worthless and uninterested in anything besides elaborately designed vestidos like the one I wore today, expensive makeup, and trends: a true lady of Mexican nobleness who had been dragged into the wilderness.

At first, I didn’t mind playing the part, because it had been true. I was brought to Coloma against my will. But every miracle I witnessed chipped away that side of me. In Sonora, I was a porcelain doll, but along the road, the glaze had cracked, and underneath it was something finer altogether—someone who actually cared about others, about everyone.

The siblings set el viejito on the stool in front of Mamá. She reached for don Álvaro’s hand. The top of it was covered in lines and sunspots, while Mamá’s fingertips were stained black from handling so much sal negra. The black salt might have healed any effects of overwork on her fingers, but the color never washed away no matter how many times she bathed in the river, no matter how often I caught her scrubbing them roughly with soap.

Despite the changes in her, Mamá was still the most beautiful woman in the world. Her pine-brown hair was tied back in a tight bun she smoothed with bandoline. Her features were still perfectly balanced, from the roundness of her cheeks to the curve of her nose. Her eyes wide, eyelashes long and glorious, she turned to me now, talking without speaking the way mamás do. She wasn’t tall, was in fact shorter than me by more than a foot, but her presence was godly and could not be ignored.

I picked up the pace, breathless—wishing I could shuck off my dress right here, and the high-heeled lace-up botas—and managed to lug another pail filled with sal negra, the fourth one since Mamá got started at sunrise. It was the last we’d have until Papá and Víctor returned with more. Back in Sonora, I would never have been expected to do physical labor like this. I’d been so different then. I had been a girl who was interested only in dresses and boys and makeup. That was all I ever knew.

Now I knew magia.

I set the pail down, careful not to spill a single grain of sal, then stood to one side, eager to get a closer look before Mamá waved me back to my chair. Mamá nodded to me, grunted an acknowledgment. A gracias never escaped her lips casually.

She scooped up some of the sal negra with a tiny spoon made of plata fina that was etched with lavish designs on its handle. She cupped her hand under the bowl of the spoon. Small blue flowers sprouted from the few grains that made it through her fingers and dropped to the soil at her feet. However careful she was, a small bed of flowers always grew around her from the day’s work, making Mamá look like una reina hada, a fairy queen—a miracle in itself that never ceased to amaze me.

I wondered what magia would feel like at my own fingertips. But so far I hadn’t needed to be healed, and Mamá conserved the sal—always said it was to be used only on those who truly needed it.

And because Mamá’s father was financing the construction of this whole town, because her father owned the mines and had gifted Mamá our claim, our family controlled the supply of sal negra. What the workers here mined outside of our personal claim was sent back to Abuelo, who was planning to make a fortune selling it to his closest friends. The only problem had been the outcome of the war and the new dangers we faced after losing it. Abuelo had given us two more months, then expected us back home. But I was not sure Mamá would be willing to leave this place.

Mamá focused fully on her work, added the spoonful of sal to a sterling silver cup that sat on her lap and held a single ounce of water. Over the last three months, I’d seen la magia work every single time, but the injuries it healed had been newer—a broken leg or brazo or a gash that had gotten infected and was covered in pus, sicknesses that had made grown-ups suddenly cough up sangre or nauseated them so much they couldn’t even keep water in their bellies—nothing that wasn’t a recent injury or sickness yet.

“Open your mouth,” Mamá said like a priest giving sacrament, and scooped one spoonful of the salted agua. Again, she cupped her hand underneath the spoon, kept the cup balanced on her lap. She held her breath as she moved it forward.

A single drop of water fell, una flor sprouting in the soil under Mamá in a blink as if it had always been there. Mamá eyed it, growled to herself, but kept going.

Don Alvaro opened his mouth wide and tilted his head up to the sky, as if the light of the sun could pierce the darkness he’d been living in for so long.

Every time someone received the sal, everyone else in line quieted, like they were dreading the possibility that la magia would not work this time—or ever again. I myself didn’t doubt la magia; I just wasn’t completely sure of its strength. Restoring don Álvaro’s eyesight wasn’t healing so much as building something anew, two different things in my mind.

I focused on don Álvaro, even forgetting the pain of my cinched corset. Who could breathe at a time like this anyway?

I knew the following: A simple wound like an infected gash or a broken bone seemed to heal within ten seconds. A sickness affecting the entire body could take whole minutes. But I wasn’t sure how long it might take for sal negra to heal someone injured so long ago.

For the sake of Mamá’s good temperament, this had to work.