Perhaps the key word of the 1930s was 'crisis'. The comfortable world of a bourgeois world had been declared shattered for ever by the Great War: and yet, between recurrent nightmares and dark forebodings for the future, every family continued its individual pursuit of an odd variety of bluebirds of happiness. The Prydderch family for instance, devoted to education and getting on, were very cross when Enid, their youngest and brightest, sacrificed her own promising career in order to marry John Cilydd More, a country solicitor, whom she believes to be a poet of great potential. Now she is pregant. Her aunt Sali Prydderch, particularly yearns for a reconciliation. She approaches Amy Parry, Enid's best friend who is now a County School teacher in the same North Wales seaside town. Salt of the Earth is the third in a sequence of novels which began with Flesh and Blood and The Best of Friends - a sequence which when completed, will have described the processes of growth, change and decay which have made Wales what it is today.