NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST - The bravely imagined, wildly acclaimed debut novel from the author of Vampires in the Lemon Grove--about a thirteen year old girl who sets out on a mission through magical swamps to save her family.

"Ms. Russell is one in a million.... A suspensfuly, deeply haunted book." --The New York Times

Thirteen-year-old Ava Bigtree has lived her entire life at Swamplandia!, her family's island home and gator-wrestling theme park in the Florida Everglades. But when illness fells Ava's mother, the park's indomitable headliner, the family is plunged into chaos; her father withdraws, her sister falls in love with a spooky character known as the Dredgeman, and her brilliant big brother, Kiwi, defects to a rival park called The World of Darkness.

As Ava embarks on her mission to save them all, we are drawn into a lush debut that takes us to the shimmering edge of reality.