Swamplandia!

Ava Bigtree is thirteen and has spent her whole life on her family's island in the Florida Everglades, where the family runs a park whose show is alligator wrestling. When her mother Hilola, the park's star alligator wrestler, dies of cancer, the Bigtrees come apart. Their father, the Chief, withdraws and then disappears; Ava's sister Ossie begins a romance with a ghost, the Dredgeman; and her clever older brother Kiwi leaves to work, sweeping floors, at the World of Darkness, a competing park. Left in charge of the failing park, Ava heads deep into the swamp to rescue her family, led by a mysterious stranger called the Bird Man, on a journey where the real and the uncanny blur.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Genres

Family, Coming of age (assigned by AI)

Set in

United States

First published

2011

Author's age

30 when first published

ISBN

9780307263995 (Knopf, United States)

9780307276681 (Vintage, United States)

9780099555834 (Vintage, United Kingdom)

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Wikidata