Girls of the wetland

Ada promised herself she would never return to the Trace. After all, the only thing waiting for her in the shack in the swamp is a hard life with her father, who is never far from a blow or a harsh word. For a brief moment, she experienced something else, something more beautiful, but now she has nowhere else to go. So she heads home, even though she knows she will pay a high price. Matilda lives on the other side of the Trace. She comes from a Black family that she tries her hardest to protect from a ruthless, prejudiced world, but it is an endless struggle. She decides to move north to Ohio and tell everyone what life in the South is really like. These two girls living in a racially divided society are brought together by an unexpected event – a murder that becomes the foundation of their strange friendship. In a dangerous world of bootleggers and moral corruption, they must navigate the traps fate has laid for them and deal with secrets that could cost them their lives. In her debut, Kelly Mustian tells the story of two teenage girls in 1920s Mississippi, with an atmosphere reminiscent of the famous novel Where the Crawdads Sing.