| Edition |
1st Vintage Books ed. |
| Description |
400 pages ; 21 cm |
| Note |
"Vintage contemporaries." |
|
July 2001" --T.p. verso. |
|
"Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf ... New York [in different form], in 2010 [i.e. 2011]"--T.p. verso. |
| Summary |
This novel takes us to the swamps of the Florida Everglades, and introduces us to Ava Bigtree, an unforgettable young heroine. The Bigtree alligator wrestling dynasty is in decline, and Swamplandia!, their island home and gator wrestling theme park, formerly no. 1 in the region, is swiftly being encroached upon by a fearsome and sophisticated competitor called the World of Darkness. Ava's mother, the park's indomitable headliner, has just died; her sister, Ossie, has fallen in love with a spooky character known as the Dredgeman, who may or may not be an actual ghost; and her brilliant big brother, Kiwi, who dreams of becoming a scholar, has just defected to the World of Darkness in a last-ditch effort to keep their family business from going under. Ava's father, affectionately known as Chief Bigtree, is AWOL, and that leaves Ava, a resourceful but terrified thirteen, to manage ninety eight gators as well as her own grief. Against a backdrop of hauntingly fecund plant life animated by ancient lizards and lawless hungers, the author has written a novel about a family's struggle to stay afloat in a world that is inexorably sinking. |
| Subject |
Girls -- Fiction.
|
|
Girls. |
| Genre/Form |
Fiction.
|
| Subject |
Mothers -- Death -- Fiction.
|
|
Mothers -- Death. |
|
Motherless families -- Fiction.
|
|
Motherless families. |
|
Amusement parks -- Fiction.
|
|
Amusement parks. |
|
Alligators -- Fiction.
|
|
Alligators. |
|
Everglades (Fla.) -- Fiction.
|
|
Ten Thousand Islands (Fla.) -- Fiction.
|
|
Girls. |
|
Mothers. |
| Genre/Form |
Novels.
|
|
Novels.
|
| ISBN |
9780307276681 paperback |
|
0307276686 paperback |
|
