"In that space that lay between sleep and the morning's new life, Stranger tasted it again, that memory from his forgotten life.
Not a sight or a sound or a touch.
But a taste, sweet and salty..."
A man with a thousand identities--none of them his own--lives and dies in a town with no name, trapped in a pocket universe isolated from the rest of the world. Each morning he awakens in the body of a different citizen of the town. Each day he lives the life of that citizen, man or woman, old or young, rich or poor. And each night he dies at the hands of another--an individual, a jury, or a mob from the town--who takes his life in retribution for whatever wrongs, real or imagined, they perceive his current identity has inflicted upon them. To the townspeople, this man is known by the name of whichever villager's life and face he is wearing on a given day, but to himself he is "Stranger" for he has no memory of his life before this strange existence.
For three years Stranger has suffered this daily cycle of death and rebirth. Many days he has sought escape from his fate. Other days he has lived and died resigned to it. But always he has questioned why. Then a new opportunity presents itself to Stranger--an opportunity with no answers any easier than the questions he has grappled with for the past three years--and Stranger must act quickly to choose his fate.
A Taste Sweet and Salty presents a compelling enigma which explore's the boundaries between truth and deception, hope and despair; offering its protagonist's very strange condition as a crystal-clear lens onto our own familiar human one. The story is poetic in language, evocative in mood and perfect in pitch--a beautifully-paced mystery with a satisfying conclusion.