The Salt People. Future World Books, #3

Beyond the endless ocean lies a valley. It has no match anywhere else on earth. At its center stands a village-quiet and neatly ordered. What an outsider would describe as a "picturesque." But this valley also harbors a secret, a secret that has given birth to the "Gawkers" from above who gather regularly about the valley rim to jeer and stare at the strange inhabitants below. As our story unfolds, those "above" and those "below" live separate lives.
Each group having long since decided that they are sufficient unto themselves. But Mother Nature has other plans and has taken it upon herself to test this ocean land to its core. The Gawkers who live upon the hills and plains have been caught unawares. Not so the people of the valley. Mother Nature similarly visited them three centuries earlier and they have prepared. But even they cannot escape the scourge forever, especially when they realize that the Gawkers hold a critical piece to their survival."The Salt People" is the story of two seemingly opposite communities caught up in an event over which neither has control.
To survive the crisis they have two choices: the first leads to destruction; the other to cooperation and the outwitting of a common enemy.