The Scheherazade figure is a familiar and celebrated presence in literature. The power of her stories can be healing, redemptive, enabling. But what if, as in Sarah Armstrong’s Salt Rain, the storyteller is your mother, and she’s damaged? What if the fantasies she tells you are, consciously or unconsciously, presented as fact, while truths are withheld? Would you revere the storyteller as a great creative force, or feel betrayed by her lies?