The Crocodile Bride

February 15, 2022
This debut work of fiction brings together lyrical prose, a swampland setting rich with moss-covered cypress, and the haunting bayou myth of the crocodile bride. Following the intertwined lives of 11-year-old Sunshine and her immediate family members, Pedersen's debut centers around Sunshine's family home, a yellow house in Fingertip, Louisiana. As Sunshine comes of age, and grows increasingly aware of the male gaze, her changing body becomes a thread that weaves together the ways that her female family members' bodies have been sexually abused and traumatized. Sunshine learns the harsh realities of adulthood over the course of a summer, when her father's abuse and dishonesty are exposed. Pedersen's expert character development and winding plot are aided by short, clipped chapters that bounce back and forth in time, showing the differing perspectives of women in Sunshine's family. Pedersen skillfully crafts a slow burn of a novel that eventually opens up to expose generations of family secrets, and more importantly, the value of unearthing truth.

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February 15, 2022
Pedersen's debut novel describes how generations of abuse come to a head for one rural Louisiana family in 1982. That's the summer Sunshine turns 12. She initially seems the classic preadolescent heroine--tomboyish, plucky, innocent yet wise--but her coming-of-age story is as much about loss as growth. Sunshine has grown up in the dying bayou hamlet of Fingertip, cocooned by family despite having no mother or any knowledge of one. She and her hard-drinking, charming, but moody father, Billy, whom she adores, live just across the road from Billy's sister, Lou, and Sunshine's cousin and only friend, JL. Sunshine's summer, and the novel, starts with her bittersweet awareness that her world is about to change, that Lou and JL will be moving at summer's end into the nearby town of St. Cadence with Lou's fiance (the novel's one example of uncomplicated decency and kindness). The first seemingly lighthearted scenes--a swim with Lou and JL, a family celebration over Billy's announcement that he's been promoted--are infected with overt foreboding even before Billy admits to Sunshine that he was actually fired then briefly, tearfully, drunkenly gropes her. The novel frequently shifts between Sunshine's increasingly perilous summer and the past history of Lou and Billy's long-dead parents. Alcoholic John Jay beat his wife, Catherine, and bullied his children, especially sensitive, stuttering Billy. Telling the children fanciful stories to ward off ugly truths, Catherine failed to protect them. By 15, Billy was emotionally unstable and drinking heavily. Lou married early to escape Fingertip, but when her first husband proved more violent than her father, she returned home with JL. Lou and Billy have never confronted their own troubled relationship. Now she senses but cannot quite face the danger signs as Billy goes off the rails in ways Sunshine is ill-equipped to understand or stop. Pedersen builds an all-too-familiar "chain of grief" linked by violence, incest, and family secrets. Despite empathetic characters and delicate prose, the Southern gothic tropes feel overly familiar.

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February 1, 2022

DEBUT Pedersen's stunning debut depicts difficult subjects like alcohol addition, domestic violence, and sexual abuse. It is the summer of 1982 in Fingertip, LA, and 11-year-old Sunshine Turner feels quite alone. The town has one road and two children, Sunshine and her cousin JL. Sunshine holds her own coming of age and her father's hardships as secrets she believes she must endure in order to keep the peace. But other women in her family have their own secrets. While Sunshine is the central figure, the legacy of family trauma is told by several generations of Turner women. Ultimately, that trauma can subside when women share their secrets, stumbling over the language needed to tell what happened both around and to them. Readers of Southern writers such as Dorothy Allison or Kaye Gibbons may find the plot predictable but nonetheless enticing, with suspenseful moments of unforeseeable consequences. VERDICT Fans of fiction about Southern women or about the formative years of girlhood will love this quick, captivating read that tugs at the heartstrings.--Shannon Marie Robinson

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