Russell's willingness to lend flesh and blood to her fanciful, fantastical creations gives this spry novel a potent punch and announces an enthralling new beginning for a quickly evolving young author. This novel takes us to the swamps of the Florida Everglades, and introduces us to Ava Bigtree, an unforgettable young heroine.

Worst of all is the disappearance of the Chief, spurring Ava to embark upon a rescue mission that will take her from the Gulf of Mexico to the gates of hell, occasionally assisted by an unlikely extended family that includes the geriatric Grandpa Sawtooth, the Bird Man, and a tiny red alligator with the potential to save the park. Swamplandia Book descriptions Twelve year old Ava must travel into the Underworld part of the swamp in order to save her familys dynasty of Bigtree alligator wresting. In Brief From the celebrated twenty-nine-year-old author of the everywhere-heralded short-story collection St. After the death of mother Hilola the park's star alligator wrestler Ava, the youngest Bigtree, takes her place in the spotlight while her sister, Ossie, elopes with a ghostly man named Louis Thanksgiving, and brother Kiwi winds up sweeping floors at Swamplandia!'s competition. Swamplandia Karen Russell, 2011 Knopf Doubleday 336 pp. We return to Swamplandia!, the once-thriving Florida tourist attraction where the Bigtree clan Ava, Ossie, Kiwi, and the Chief wrestles alligators. Few novelists debut with as much hearty recommendation as Russell, a New Yorker 20-under-40 whose cunning first novel germinates a seed planted in her much-loved collection, St.

Swamplandia book