Swamplandia! by Karen Russell

When world champion alligator wrestler Hilola Bigtree dies of ovarian cancer, it is the beginning of the end for the renowned family-run Swamplandia! Florida Everglades theme park. Her husband, the jocular Chief Bigtree, heads to the mainland in search of investors to help pay the park’s staggering debt, her eldest son Kiwi goes to work for the competition, the ominously titled “World of Darkness,” while middle daughter Osceolo decides to elope with her boyfriend Louis Thanksgiving (who just happens to be a dredgeman that died sometime in the 1930’s). This leaves thirteen-year-old Ava on her own in the swamp, waiting for her family to come back and save the only home she’s ever known. Worried that her sister has followed a ghost to her doom, Ava takes the dubious advice of an itinerant bird wrangler who claims to be able to guide Ava to the underworld, where not only could she find and save her sister, but maybe, just maybe, she could see her beloved mother one more time. Ava is so desperate to see her kin that she agrees to go on the journey, even though a still, small voice keeps insisting that what she seeks does not exist. And when the journey turns dark, Ava is forced to discard the magical thinking of girlhood and accept the harsh reality and deep unfairness of the adult world. This is not a book to be rushed through. It may not even be a book for many of you, this slow boiling, twilight character study of a beleaguered family of forlorn alligator wrestlers. But for some of you, those of you not afraid to walk in Ava or Kiwi’s dirty bare feet for awhile, this story is a shining metaphor for the treacherous swamp of adolescence, which is often studded with pits of quicksand and camouflaged alligators, just waiting to swallow you up or drag you down. And only those with the spirit of a wrestler and a heart as big a tree will make it through to the other side. If you’re in the mood for something other than the usual teen angst fare that happens to be gorgeously written to boot, take trip down south to visit Swamplandia! . I hear it’s pretty pleasant there this time of year…