Swamplandia!

A triumphant debut novel and follow-up to Karen Russell's universally acclaimed short story collection "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves.
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The Bigtree alligator wrestling dynasty is in decline--"think Buddenbrooks "set in the Florida Everglades--and Swamplandia!, their island home and gator-wrestling theme park, is swiftly being encroached upon by a sophisticated competitor known as the World of Darkness. Ava, a resourceful but terrified twelve, must manage seventy gators and the vast, inscrutable landscape of her own grief. Her mother, Swamp landia!'s legendary headliner, has just died; her sister is having an affair with a ghost called the Dredgeman; her brother has secretly defected to the World of Darkness in a last-ditch effort to keep their sinking family afloat; and her father, Chief Bigtree, is AWOL. To save her family, Ava must journey on her own to a perilous part of the swamp called the Underworld, a harrowing odyssey from which she emerges a true heroine.
Selected as one of "Granta's" Best Young American Novelists, Karen Russell is an irrepressible new voice in contemporary fiction. "From the Hardcover edition."