New Books Network Caroline Tracey, "Salt Lakes: An Unnatural History" (W. W. Norton, 2026)
Apr 3, 2026
Caroline Tracey, author and researcher exploring salt lakes across North America and Central Asia. She mixes memoir with environmental reporting. Topics include how salt lakes form and why they are threatened. She discusses colonial water diversion, health impacts of drying lakes, Zuni Salt Lake restitution, and links between queer theory and salt-lake ecologies.
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How The Salton Sea Sparked The Book
- Caroline Tracey first visited the Salton Sea after reading about California desert literature and published a 2015 essay that launched her deeper research.
- The Salton Sea's near-manmade origin—an irrigation canal overflow in 1904—hooked her with its aesthetic and catastrophic history.
Why Salt Lakes Are Unmistakable And Fragile
- Salt lakes form in closed basins where inflow has no outlet, so evaporation concentrates minerals and creates highly reflective, glistening blue waters.
- Their arid settings make them visually striking and ecologically unique, with clear mountain and sky reflections that drew Caroline Tracey to study them.
Colonial Water Policies Are A Common Cause Of Decline
- Colonial and settler water diversions repeatedly drive salt lake decline worldwide by redirecting inflows for agriculture and settlement.
- Examples include Mormon-era irrigation diverting Great Salt Lake tributaries and Soviet cotton irrigation draining rivers that fed the Aral Sea.
