Riveting and atmospheric, this novel delivers a powerful punch. I've never been one to really appreciate a lot of descriptive imagery, but it worked so well in this novel. This was a quick read & one that I think will appeal to fans of The Room. 4 stars, only because I wanted the ending to be lil bit more impactful.

Helena's mother was abducted and gave birth to her in captivity. Until she was a teenager, Helena lived with her parents in the middle of the swamp without electricity, running water, or modern conveniences. As an adult, Helena has put her past behind her and now has a devoted husband and two beautiful daughters. When her father escapes from prison, her life is turned upside down.

This is one of those books that you stay up all night reading. I couldn't put it down. It was well written, the characters were dynamic and the story moved quickly. I can't wait for the author's next book. Highly recommended.

This is the story of Helena, the daughter Jacob sired with, young teen was kidnapped in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Jacob was a master hunter and woodsman and he was able kept them hidden in a primitive cabin for over 12 years. He taught Helena how to hunt and to survive in the wilderness.

Once the two women escaped, Jacob was caught and sent to prison. Helena had many difficulties adjusting to her grandparents life. Eventually she ran away, changed her name and started a new life with a husband and 2 children. Then her father escaped from prison, killed two policemen and disappeared.

Helena knows instinctively that her father is headed to her home. She fears for the lives of her husband and children. She also realizes that the same hunting and survival skills that her father taught her will enable her to catch him.

This psychological thriller is narrated by Helena. The chapters alternate between her early life growing up in the wilderness and the present time after her father has escaped and she must search for him. We learn of the psychological tools Jacob used to train and dominate both Helena and her mother. We also learn of the natural beauty of the remote area of Michigan.

The suspense builds until the conclusion. The author has crafted a thriller that readers will remember long after the last page.

A teenager is abducted when she is 14 and has a child when she is 16. This story is told by that child after about 12 years of fleeing the abductor, she only knew as her father. It dealt a lot with her feelings and emotions of growing up with only her mother and her abductor (father) and no one else around. Helena knew of no other life and was relatively happy until the fateful day they escaped. Then she realized what her father had done and why her mother acted the way that she did.

I really liked this book and lot and felt for Helena. She was a different kind of girl due to her upbringing, but one that you can't help but root for and feel empathy towards. I can definitely say all the buzz around this book is worth it.

Thanks to Penguin Group Putnam and Net Galley for providing me with a free e-galley in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.

I hate to leave a review that isn't positive but this just wasn't what I expected. I was really interested to learn more about the time in captivity but there was just too much focus on the wilderness stuff, in the past and present timelines. It just couldn't hold my interest. But I appreciate the opportunity to preview this book, thank you!!

I really wanted to like this book, it has such a cool premise, but I just didn't. The narration style was frustrating and dragged. Also the narrators logic took some pretty big leaps that just didn't feel natural or easy to believe. Glad I gave this book a chance, and I did enjoy some of the world building the author did regarding their life in a cabin in the UP- but otherwise, this book was disappointing.

The Marsh King’s Daughter by Karen Dionne is set in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Helene Pelletier had an unconventional childhood growing up in an isolated area where her only human contact was her mother and father. That all changed when she was twelve years old. Helene discovered that her mother had been kidnapped by Jacob, her father, when she was only fourteen years old. Thanks to a stranger who got lost, Helen and her mom were able to escape. Helene’s father, Jacob Holbrook was captured and has been serving time in the local maximum-security prison. Helene counts herself very lucky that she now has a wonderful husband and two little girls. But then Helene hears that Jacob has escaped while being transported. She is afraid for her little girls. Stephen, her husband, is unaware of Helene’s past, but is quickly brought up to speed when the police arrive on their doorstep. Helene knows that the police will never be able to find her father. He can easily disappear into the marshland and never be found. Jacob taught Helene all the necessary skills to survive and how to track. If anyone can locate Jacob, it will be Helene. She knows this is the only way to ensure her families safety. On the trail of her father, Helene reminisces about early years and what happened when she returned to civilization with her mother. Helene knows she is on her father’s trail when she finds objects he left for her. But is Helene hunting Jacob or is Jacob drawing her in?

The Marsh King’s Daughter has an interesting premise, but the final product did not live up to the summary on the book. I read The Marsh King’s Daughter, but I did not get into the story. It never captured my attention. I particularly disliked Helene. Her admiration for her father was disconcerting, and Helene’s dislike of her mother was upsetting (the poor woman had been kidnapped, raped, belittled, tortured). I could not understand Helene living on her paternal grandparent’s property (she inherited it). Personally, I would have sold the land to the highest bidder and moved to a different state (far, far away). Jacob raised Helene to be like him and think like him (she hunts, fishes, tracks). It makes me really question if this woman should be allowed around children (and glad that she is a fictional character). I give The Marsh King’s Daughter 2 out of 5 stars. I found the pace of the story to be glacial and key details are repeated throughout the whole novel (like how Helene is the only person who can find Jacob). There is no suspense and little action (yawn). The story is told more in a “matter of fact” fashion. The Marsh King’s Daughter plays out exactly as I thought it would (predictable). The “twist” was no surprise to me. I could see it coming based on Helene’s personality. For those of people who love animal (like me), there is bear hunting in the story. My favorite character (I actually liked one) was Iris, Helene’s eldest daughter (a sensitive child). The youngest, Mari sounded like a holy terror. The one good quality of The Marsh King’s Daughter was its ability to help me drift off to sleep (I suffer from insomnia).

I was very intrigued by the premise of this book. I'm usually always on board for a good game of cat & mouse and this seemed like the ultimate game...daughter verses father. We are first introduced to Helena when she's grown and the married mom to two little girls. When she hears on the news that the identity of a local prison escapee is her father, her carefully crafted life with her new identity and family explodes. Very quickly she decides she's the only one who is cunning enough to track down and take on her father; after all, he taught her everything she knows about hunting and killing prey.

The narrative alternates between the present game of cat & mouse and Helena's childhood , starting when she was born to a mother who was herself a young teenager. Her mother had been kidnapped by Helena's father, who's know as The Marsh King. There are very long, detailed descriptions of Helena's growing up years in the wilderness with her father being the person she spent the most time with. Very long. Very detailed. While I appreciate the exceptional literary skills of the author in these sections, I found that my mind wandered and many times I found myself skimming through to get back to the present. Another reason I skimmed these past sections, and something I wish I would've known going in was the very graphic and for me disturbing scenes of hunting and killing many animals...I just don't have a desire to read scenes like that and that caused me to skip large portions of the text.  In the end, the back and forth of time frames caused a lack of the much needed suspense I was looking for in a book billed as a thriller. I'm very much in the minority in terms of this book not being for me so I'd urge you to try it for yourself and decide.

This isn't the type of book that I would normally read and I come to realize it was different and intriguing. The more revealed about Helena past and present that came to light I knew i just had to know more about this character and I really did love getting the back and forth of past and present. After reading the description about this book I was expecting Helena to hate her father after knowing about him and everything she possibly when through. What I wasn't expecting was a women who still did have some care about her father even knowing what he had done. It was so interesting seeing her point of view when it came to her childhood because it did seem good then there was the parts where it was obvious that things were getting bad, the manipulation and abuse that was going on. For the most part she was a daddy's girl until she was the one who eventually was the reason he was behind bars. As for the way it came into the end, wow I loved it the suspense of what was going to happen in the ending and what actually happy was great, i loved it kept me on my toes. Overall this book might not be for everyone but I personally found it fascinating.

Thank you to NetGalley for the chance to read "The Marsh King's Daughter" by Karen Dionne.
I have not given feedback nor done a review because each time I try to pen my review, a reaction, there are too many words and I cannot find order.

Feral and wild, family, love and passionate hate - kidnapping, brainwashing, torture, murder, and redemption.

If you want a fiction that seems to come from deep and tragic truth, you need a read that is not easy to suss the end. This is your book.

Warning, this story will become a part of your psyche and human tragedies and triumphs will bring this back from your memory.

Wow.

So many books are releasing in June that I have been highly anticipating. 

The Marsh King’s Daughter, by Karen Dionne, was one of them!  

 I first saw this book back in January and knew I would have to read it immediately. The synopsis even gave me (the lover of all things skin-crawly and creepy) the “heebie jeebies”.

When a notorious child abductor, known as The Marsh King, escapes from prison, Helena knows her family is in danger.  For what no one knows, not her husband or her children, is that she has many secrets from her childhood.  No one knows that she was born in captivity.  No one knows she had no contact with the outside world until she was twelve.  No one knows she is The Marsh King’s Daughter and that he taught her how to be a killer.  And now, her target is him. 

 I must say that this novel was absolutely binge-worthy.   I loved the twist on the ever-popular abduction story (think Room).  I always find novels like these ones so interesting to read about since the psychology around such an incident is so complex.  Naturally, Helena was a seriously complex character.  Struggling with what she knows is right and what she was raised to believe is right, she was such an interesting character to have the novel narrated by.

 Told partially in the present, as Helena uses her hunting skills to track her father and in flashbacks to her childhood in the marsh, Native symbolism and culture made this one stand out from the rest.

 Now, the one issue I had with this novel was Helena herself.  I loved how complex her character was, I loved how I was wondering if she was suffering from PTSD or maybe she truly was in cahoots with her father, but I didn’t find her necessarily too likeable.   Perhaps that was the point since her childhood upbringing made her quite “hard” and, rightfully so, but I found it hard to connect with her. 

 Overall, if you are a fan of the abduction thrillers and want something with a bit of a twist, The Marsh King’s Daughter would be a perfect next read.

Scrappymags 3-word review: Daddy is Ca-razy!! 

Genre: Mystery/Thriller

Shortest summary ever: Main character Helena lives a simple life making jams and jellies in the upper peninsula of Michigan (my home state - holla'!) married to a kind husband and two beautiful girls. Then her world implodes when she finds out her felon father escaped from prison. But wait - she didn't tell her husband about dear ol' dad. Nor did she mention that her father was a deranged murderer who kidnapped her mom, raped her, impregnated her with Helena and then kept them captive for 12 years. Oops. The story flashes between past and present as we learn about Helena's experience as a child and her newly formed adult life as they quickly converge and crash together. 

What’s good under the hood: We would all be lying if we said we weren't captivated with stories like this because they are a niche', a rarity, and thus the spotlight shines brightly on them with intrigue. Then there's the inevitable exclusive "My Story" book and one-on-one interviews or (God-forbid) Dr. Phil analysis. As side-line viewers we wonder, "What happened?" "Why didn't she/he leave?", etc... What I enjoyed about The Marsh King.. was the seeming reality of pitfalls for Helena - not knowing what shaking hands meant, not understanding the concept of "manners" both table and social, discovering what other children looked like. Characteristics that made the story believable and valid boosted the story for me. I could vividly feel pain for this woman yet admire her strength and courage. Her conflicting feelings as a child about her dad were sadly believable. This story IS enthralling and terrifying at the same time. I can understand wanting to bury that former self away. 

Also I loved reading the interspersed telling of the story of the same name by Hans Christian Anderson. 

What’s bad or made me mad: There were a few faux pas that will likely be cleaned up by publication (as a Blockhead I can assure you there are 5 members of New Kids on the Block and Shannon Doherty never had blonde hair except for that unfortunate dye job in Season 1 of BH 90210), but the only irk was the story resolution was a bit muddled for me. Without giving spoilers, I questioned some of Helena's motivations, which didn't add up for me. But in total, a great read and a unique story. 

Recommend to/for:

Best-seller readers
Quick reads, beach reads
Those in the woods on vacation (haha...if you like to be scared, like me)
Thanks to NetGalley and  Penguin Group Putnam, G.P. Putnam's Sons and the author Karen Dionne for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review and freaking me out a bit about da' U.P. Eh?

Awhile ago I was approved for the sample of THE MARSH KING'S DAUGHTER by Karen Dionne, and I needed more! So I was very excited to be sent a copy from Putnam. The synopsis was enough to get my attention, but I was hooked after reading the first chapter (from the sample). 'I was born two years into my mother's captivity. She was three weeks shy of seventeen. If I had known then what I do now, things would have been a lot different. I wouldn't have adored my father.'

The story begins with a news bulletin - notorious child abductor, known as the Marsh King, has escaped from maximum security prison and was last seen disappearing into the marshlands of Michigan's upper peninsula.

Helena seems like your average mother and wife in her small town. Little does everyone know, she was in fact born in captivity, had zero contact with the outside world until she was the ripe age of 12, and that she grew up in the marshes and taught how to kill. No one in her life, not even her husband, knows that she's the Marsh King's daughter. Now that he's escaped, Helena knows that she and her children are his next targets. She knows all too well that the Marsh King can survive and hunt in the wilderness better than anyone else - but can he outlast his daughter?

Reading the intro, about how Helena's mother was taken by Jacob Holbrook (aka Marsh King) at the age of 13 out into the wilderness, and then only two short years later she gave birth to Helena, was crazy. When they finally escape, their story becomes an International sensation and Helena did everything she could to keep her real identity a secret so she could lead a normal life.

This was a fantastic domestic/abduction thriller. I binged on this one when I finally was able to get to it. I loved Karen Dionne's writing style and her character development and story telling were amazing. We go back and forth from present to past. As Helena uses her childhood learned skills to track her father we get some flashbacks. Overall, the suspense was great, characters were complex, and the story telling was phenomenal. I'd highly recommend this to anyone that loves a fast paced, abduction thriller!

I give this 5/5 stars!

Big thanks to Putnam for the copy in exchange for my honest review!

THIS BOOK!!! I have never read a suspense story with such an original and absolutely chilling premise - this one will stay with me for a long, long time. I loved that it was a quieter suspense read without the typical suburban-husband-kills-wife or diabolical serial killer slashing through bodies left and right. I'm really struggling to describe how this book impacted me and how much I recommend it to suspense and family-drama readers, and readers (like my husband) who enjoy hunting/fishing/outdoors books........this short review will have to suffice, though!

A few thoughts on the book beyond my general rave:

1) I was absolutely haunted by Helena's feelings toward her despicable father throughout the book, but also understand just how realistic those feelings may be for a child/adult in her situation - raised in captivity and taught to hate her mother. I just can't stop thinking about this part of the story!
2) The Upper Peninsula of Michigan is a fascinating and perfect setting for this book - I'm familiar with the UP from living within driving distance while growing up, but the stark isolation described in this book goes beyond anything I ever have or want to experience there.
3) The alternating now-and-then style is captivating and keeps you reading, all the while making you shake your head at how???? OMG!!!

So. I'll just say it and get it over with. I may be the only person on God's green earth who will hate the new book that everyone is and will continue to rave about. The Marsh King's Daughter is not for wussy type people like me. I'm sure it's brilliant. But I am not part of the audience for whom it was written. I don't like to read about dysfunctional families and there are none more dysfunctional than The Marsh King's (even if it wasn't their fault). I do not like reading about cruelty to animals - even if "some" (not all) of that cruelty means food for the table. I rarely say anything negative about books. Rarely to practically never, but I cannot jump on this particular book bandwagon. I would like the author and publisher know that it is not in my nature to slam books, and I will not be doing that, so please don't worry that I'll post this review at amazon or goodreads, I won't. It just wasn't a book for me.

I would like the thank NetGalley, Karen Dionne, and G.P. Putnam's Sons for the advanced digital copy in exchange for an honest review. This is a gripping tale told from the point of view of an adult child who was the product of a sadistic psychopathic rapist, abuser, and kidnapper. Helena grew up in a cabin deep within the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, with her mother and father. She learned to hunt, trap, fish, and skin her prey as a child. When she was 16, she and her mother escaped the terrifying grips her father held over them. Today, married with two young girls, Helena discovers that her father escaped from a nearby prison. She needs to stop her father and protect her family. Helena must finally put an end to the nightmare that has been plaguing her her entire life.

“I was the chink in his armor, his Achilles’ hell. My father raised me and shaped me into a version of himself, but in doing so he sowed the seeds of his own demise.”

There was a time when books about young abducted girls seemed to be on the shelves so much that I felt like every book I read was the same. Of course it was mirroring what had been happening in reality, young girls returned home after being ‘kept’ by disturbed men. I found myself avoiding several of the novels, but what pulled me in with this is the story is from the perspective of the child born between the victim and the abductor who has learned to exist in the wilds. ‘I was born two years into my mother’s captivity. She was three weeks shy of seventeen. If I had known then what I do now, things would have been a lot different. I wouldn’t have adored my father.’ Helena doesn’t know much of anything about the outside world, how is she to understand her father is a bad man, that her mother was taken against her will? Learning to live in the wilds on the knee of a brutal father doesn’t make her love him less. She loves, worships her father and feels distanced from her seemingly cold mother. How could she possibly wrap her mind around why her mother doesn’t seem to love her as much as her dad? How is she to understand that other world her mother belongs to and her longing for it? Helena is strong, she can take beatings, she hunts without fear, she is a feral child where her mother seems weak compared to she and her father. It is only later, through a slow painful dissection of her time in the cabin as she tracks her escapee father that she will come to understand her mother’s love.

Helena keeps her true identity hidden from her husband and children. She has done everything she can to cover her past , never telling anyone that she is the infamous Marsh King’s daughter. Too, she has changed her looks so her father could never know where she ended up. Not once visiting him in prison, though torn between a twisted love for the only father she ever knew, she has found a way to exist among others in her own way. In order to do this, she’s had to murder a part of herself and disappear. This is the part of the book some people won’t understand, how a child can love a brutal person, how even someone born in captivity could possibly have good memories threaded through with the bad. Helena is her father’s daughter, “Everything I know about the marsh that’s worth knowing, this man taught me.” For parents, it’s easy to twist a child, to win their love. Closed off from the rest of the world, how can anyone know any different than the love that’s served on the table? How can a child long for food she has never tasted? Helena’s father is a broken, twisted man with serious mental issues. How could she possibly understand her mother’s fear and weakness (and never see until long after she is gone the strength and love that was at the edge of her fear) when she was forbidden from filling her child’s head with the truth, with stories of where she came from and her abduction? Helena is loyal to her father but there comes a time when his brutality goes too far and her mind finds a way to make her see that her father is a ‘bad bad man’. As she grows and his lessons get far more severe, something inside of her sours and turns on her father. This is the rip in the world she knew, this is the turning point where she loses everything and must learn to live in the ordinary world, a place as foreign to her as outer space.

I love what Dionne did here. Who would come from the wilds and suddenly be happy in our modern day comforts, how would such a child make easy friendships, know how to navigate the social world? They wouldn’t. This clever author thought of these things. Even as a mother and wife, she needs her solitude, her time with the land. The wild child still beats inside of her. When news reveals that her father has escaped, Helena knows she can find him and if she doesn’t- there will be bloodshed. She must get to him first, to keep her husband and children safe because no one can hunt like the Marsh King.

She has made a life for herself, having never settled in with her mother and grandparents after their escape/rescue, feeling only like a bad seed, a reminder of everything her mother suffered. She is the child of the pedophile/child abductor, there could be no hope of love from her grandparents. “There’s a stigma to being the offspring of a kidnapper, rapist, and murderer that’s hard to shake.” She still has a wild streak, the marsh still lives inside of her. Torn between two worlds, she cannot live in the safe suburban world that her mother is from.

As she hunts her father down, one has to wonder if she is strong enough to conquer the Marsh King. There is a terrible weight within her, things she had to do in their final moments at the cabin that the reader learns slowly. More than a thriller, it’s a heartbreaking psychological novel. The natural world and her affinity for it was very much the heart for me. She is as wild as the marsh and I’m a sucker for novels about people surviving outside society. Everything she learned came from her father’s bent mind, and there lies the confusion and chaos in her heart, that she still feels love on the edges of her soul for someone who doesn’t deserve it. There was love in her mother too, it just dawned on Helena too late. Read it, it’s brutal and dark yet there is a resilience in Helena’s nature and a lot of fight! Readers won’t always love Helena, and will feel horrible for her mother, but this isn’t her story! You can be assured that Helena is exactly as one would expect such a child to be, with everything she was born into and the world she later was delivered to.

Publication Date: June 13, 2017

Penguin Group

Putnam

Helena grew up in an isolated cabin deep in the marshes of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. It wasn't until she was a teenager that she understood the horrible truth of her unconventional childhood: her father was a kidnapper and rapist, and her mother his victim and prisoner. Now an adult, Helena has two young children of her own, and her father, known as The Marsh King, has been in prison for over a decade. Then one day, state troopers show up at her door; her father has escaped from prison. Helena knows that he will be coming for her, but her father is a consummate woodsman, able to disappear into the wilderness at will. Helena will have to use every bit of information he taught her in order to track him down and keep her family safe.

This nail-biting thriller contains shades of Room by Emma Donoghue and Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller. The story weaves between the present day, where Helena is living a more or less normal life in rural Michigan (though she still struggles with the intricacies of society), and her childhood living on the land in the isolated cabin on the marsh. We can acutely feel the subtle damage done to Helena by her father, yet she was raised to more or less worship him. Her father is a rapist, a kidnapper, and a sadist, but he was also the man who raised her, and what little girl doesn't want the approval of her father? This dissonance between the facts and the feelings of her childhood present Helena with a horrible and complex dilemma. She knows her father is an evil man, and that he means to hurt her and her family, but how do you truly stop being daddy's little girl?

I really liked this book. Dionne has taken a theme that occupies both newspaper headlines and our nightmares and made it into a terrifyingly realistic, gripping story. The weaving of past and present events is done well, revealing in increments the full story of Helena's childhood. If you've been looking for a fast-paced, stay-up-until-one-in-the-morning read, this is the perfect book for you.

An advance copy of this book was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

The Marsh King's Daughter is a subtly intense thriller that will get under your skin. Helena has built a life where no one knows that her father was a kidnapper who held her mother captive in an isolated Upper Peninsula cabin for over fourteen years. When she finds out that her father has escaped from prison, she knows that she's the only one who knows him well enough to track him down. The story alternates between Helena's recollections of her childhood and the present, where she is tracking her father using all the skills he taught her. Helena's life since she and her mother escaped the marsh hasn't been easy- she's struggled to adapt to life with other people and modern conveniences. Helena, throughout, is an intense and complicated character. While you want to sympathize with her struggles, there's a detachment about her that never let me get completely comfortable. The tension builds in both storylines as we learn about Helena's childhood and what led to her escape paralleled to her quest to find her escaped father. The UP setting is really the other main character, and the remote atmosphere lends a perfect sense of isolation to the story.

Pandora's Box
The Marsh King's Daughter
Karen Dionne


Buy This Book
Deep in the wilds of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is an infamous cabin where there once lived a little family. Father, mother and daughter spent cold winter days and fabulous summers in primitive conditions, living off the land. But the picture is far darker than it seems for this was no happy little unit but the result of an abduction and rape. When Helena Pelletier is just twelve years old she finally learns the truth about why her parents don’t seem to get along. She learns who her father really is – and what he’s really capable of.

For Helena, her love for the father she once idolized might have disappeared like an early fall snow but the love of the land he taught her has never left her. Married with two young daughters, she has a successful business selling jams and jellies made from natural ingredients grown in the wild. But those early years scarred her. Not just the hard years of primitive living in a cabin with a harsh man but the years of her return to civilization where she had to learn social skills she still doesn’t quite understand the reasons for. With a desire to leave that all behind she has done something she knows she shouldn’t have: she never tells her husband of her background, spinning instead a story of stoicism and heroics nothing like the actuality of her former life. But we never really leave the past behind us. Helena’s father, incarcerated just thirty miles away, has escaped from prison – and she has no doubt about just where he is going and who he plans to take with him.

AAR staffers Maggie, Kristen and Shannon were eager to tackle this novel of suspense and to share their thoughts about it.

MB: This is a very unusual type of mystery. Most of my recent suspense reads have been whodunits or psychological thrillers. This tale was far more straightforward with the emphasis seeming to be on the surroundings and the minutia of hunting, whether hunting for food or being involved in what is typically called a “man hunt.”

Would you agree with that or did you see the tale differently?

KD: There were a few times I wasn’t actually sure what story was being told. The writing is arresting, but I wouldn’t really classify the book as a thriller, so I agree with you there. It was almost a meditation on abusive parenting and the importance of childhood development, with a dash of First Nations hunting traditions, UP culture, and psychopathy thrown in for good measure. The structure of past flashbacks and present narrative prevented me from really settling in and figuring out what was happening, I think.

SD: I’m not really sure how to classify this novel. It’s not straightforward by any stretch of the imagination. The structure is complex, and although we know who the villain is from the very start, there’s a lot of ground, both physical and metaphorical, to be covered before justice is served.

MB: I didn’t really connect with any of the characters. I had a feeling Helena’s mom would have had an interesting tale but we don’t get a chance to hear it. I had no empathy for her father and I was indifferent to Helena. She was an interesting narrator but not someone I wanted to get to know any better. What did you think of the characterization within the novel?

KD: I never need to spend time with any of these folks again, so I agree with you, Maggie. What I found interesting is that I’m not sure the author has empathy or connection with any of them either. She wants us to understand why Helena would feel for her father the way she does, and that was successful because I could follow the logic, but the whole narrative feels cold. Was that intentional and I’m just missing the point?

SD: I think the author made a clear choice not to share Helena’s mother’s story with the reader. She seemed to want the focus to be firmly on Helena herself and her relationship with her parents. Flashbacks showed us the horrors of Helena’s upbringing, but we also saw how she still loved her parents fiercely. I found her father to be quite reprehensible, and her mother seemed kind of weak, but Helena herself fascinated me. I enjoyed reading about her life both in and out of captivity. I loved seeing how events shape people into who they are today, and Helena’s early years definitely shaped her.

MB: Kristen, I agree about the whole narrative feeling cold and I am not sure if that was intentional or not. That coldness had me wondering if Helena was mentally ill, more behaviorally induced than biologically, but I definitely got that vibe from her. Her lack of empathy for her mother and the manner in which she handles things with her father once he escapes were indicative to me of continuing emotional problems; I thought perhaps dissociative disorder or emotional detachment disorder, both of which can be caused by trauma. When I closed the book I feared for her daughters, especially the youngest who had a developmental delay. I wondered too, if that delay was mentioned because it was supposed to clue us in to cognitive problems within Helena’s bloodline.

The setting seems to be almost another character in the book. We spend, I felt, a lot of time on learning about it and how to survive in it. I can’t say I enjoyed that much. I understood what the author was doing by handling the story in that manner but for me it distracted from the emotional showdown that was happening between a deeply flawed father and the damaged daughter he had produced. What are your thoughts on how the author handled the setting?

KD: Yeah, I didn’t need that much detail about the swamp or the texture of the dead animals or any of that. There were a few passages in this book that made me comment to my husband that “this is why I don’t often like literary fiction”; it’s too descriptive of setting and I just don’t really care. Did the detail of how she tracked add to the tension for y’all? It didn’t for me, but I’m curious.

MB: Nope, did nothing for me.

SD: The setting was actually one of the main reasons I wanted to review this story. I thought the author brought it to life beautifully. I personally enjoyed all the descriptions of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. I felt like I was really there, something that doesn’t often happen to me when I’m reading. As to your question, Kristen, I did find Helena’s tracking quite interesting. It made the whole story seem so real to me. I’m glad the author wrote this the way she did.

MB: What are your overall thoughts on the book?

KD: I finished it a few days ago and I’m still not sure. It’s not one I’m planning on revisiting because of the heavy focus on the setting, but I was so drawn in that I cannot deny that power. I wish it had given us some more exploration of the sociopathy that would lead a man to do what Jacob did, and some more time on why Helena chose motherhood, how she handles bodily autonomy or capitalism in childhood, things like that. I think overall I’d give it a B-, because it offers lots to think about; I’d recommend it for anyone who likes nature literature, and I know Helena will stay with me for a while. Y’all?

MB: I found the book very well done technically, but I can’t say that I was drawn in. I had a vague curiosity about how it would end but other than worrying about Helena’s kids, the novel elicited no real emotions from me. I would give it a B- as well. As far as who would enjoy it, I would recommend it to fans of books like Cold Mountain or Snow Falling on Cedars, although both those novels are stronger examples of what can be done with this kind of tale.

SD: This book has a lot to recommend it. It’s very different from anything else I’ve read recently. The characters are multi-faceted, and the author’s attention to detail brought the whole story to life quite vividly. There are some scenes that might be disturbing for some readers, but I’d definitely recommend it to anyone who is looking for something thrilling, atmospheric, and unique to read. I want to check out more of this author’s work. I would give it an A-.