Title: The Crocodile BrideAuthor: Ashleigh Bell Pedersen
Series: Cold Mountain Fund #4
First Published: May 24, 2022
Publisher: Hub City Press
Pages: 296
Genre: Coming of Age, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Magical Realism, Southern Gothic
Format: Hardcover
Source: Library
Rating:
Synopsis:
Set during the swampy summer in 1982, this stunning debut novel follows eleven-year-old Sunshine Turner and her troubled father Billy as the secrets of their family’s past swirl around them in the one-road town of Fingertip, Louisiana.
During a hot summer of June moods, grubworms, and dark storms, Sunshine discovers stones in her chest – and learns the dangers her coming-of-age will bring about in the yellow house she shares with her father. Without the vocabulary to comprehend Billy’s actions or her own changing body, Sunshine turns to an apocryphal story passed down from her grandmother: in the dark waters of the Black Bayou lives a crocodile with an insatiable appetite and a woman with a mysterious healing gift. As Sunshine’s summer unspools, she turns to the one person who will need no explanation of the family secrets she carries—the crocodile bride.
The Crocodile Bride is at once a heartbreakingly tender coming-of-age tale and a lyrical, haunting reflection on generational trauma. Reminiscent of Jesmyn Ward and Helen Oyeyemi, Ashleigh Bell Pedersen is a promising new voice in American fiction.
Review
The Crocodile Bride is a southern gothic about a line of women coming of age in the American south and the stories that they tell to keep their families intact. Set primarily in a small backwoods town in a Louisiana bayou, the story opens with Sunshine, a 12 year old girl on the cusp of puberty growing up with her troubled father, Billy. Lacking the vocabulary to understand the precarity of her situation, Sunshine’s narration is colored by folk tales and childhood wonder. From there the story branches out to the generations of women that came before her, weaving together a shared history of familial love and horrifying violence.
Pedersen’s prose is beautiful and precise and was easy to become immersed in. The story explores the ways that tradition, gender roles, and religion pull women into cycles of abuse generation after generation. At times the book can be hard to read, certain chapters were so painful I wept. Yet, there was also joy, and the quiet femininity and internal worlds of the women in this story kept me reading. Every character introduced in the story is fully realized and complex and I found myself caring deeply about each one. Even the book’s setting became a character in itself.
I loved this book, it was evocative and gave me a lot to contemplate when I finished reading. It is a wonderful work of southern fiction and one that I’m glad that I read. 🐊
Quote
“Perhaps it was easier to follow what was expected of her than to change course. Perhaps changing course–perhaps change, at all–felt somehow more frightening than anything or anyone else.”
Content Warnings
View Spoiler »About the Author
About Ashleigh Bell Pedersen
Ashleigh is the author of the novel THE CROCODILE BRIDE (Hub City Press), a New York Times Editors’ Choice now out in paperback, and also an actor. Her writing is represented by Elizabeth Bewley at Sterling Lord Literistic.
Ashleigh also runs Write Well Brooklyn, where she coaches kids and teens in writing and leads a free weekly Creativity Club for kids.
She lives in Brooklyn with her mischievous pitbull mix, Ernie — who sometimes resembles a cinnamon bun and other times, a hot dog.
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