The Girls in the Stilt House, a novel by Kelly Mustian is a suspenseful southern novel that takes place in Mississippi during the 1920’s Prohibition.
Ada Morgan reluctantly returns to her family home—a house on stilts—after a failed relationship. For her, it’s the last resort. She’s sure that her father, a mean drunk, won’t welcome her back. She’s still young—in her teens—but she can see no other choice. Her father, a widower, isn’t home when she arrives. He’s probably tending his traps, selling his pelts, or perhaps peddling his bootleg liquor. She dreads his return.
Matilda Patterson, the teenage daughter of a black sharecropper, lives in a shack on the other side of the swamp. She comes from a loving home. Her father works hard to provide for his family and her mother is again expecting a baby with the hope that this one will live. Money comes hard but they all work to survive and hopefully to even get ahead.
Violent circumstances bring these two girls together. Loyalty to their pledge to one another is vital. Theirs is a complex, emotional existence that is dependent on secrecy. Slavery may be a thing of the past, but social inequity is still a part of life. How can this relationship possibly end well?
I thoroughly enjoyed this emotional, often tense, read. The author does a good job describing life along Mississippi’s Natchez Trace, a dirt road in the days when it was the area’s main avenue of travel. The haunting, desperate life in swamp country is well described, and the plight of these two girls captivating. I highly recommend this debut novel.
This sounds like a book I’d enjoy. Better look into it.
I think you would enjoy this one, Irene. I’ve always been curious about the Mississippi swampland. That part of the book was enlightening, too.