02225cam a2200301 4500 1261856009 TxAuBib 100902s2011||||||||||||||||||||||||eng|u 2010036708 9780307263995 hbk. 0307263991 hbk. (OCoLC)1518 DLC DLC IG# BTCTA YDXCP NSB IEB IAD VP@ TxAuBib Russell, Karen, 1981- Swamplandia / Karen Russell. 1st ed. New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2011. 315 p. ; 25 cm. Twelve year old Ava must travel into the Underworld part of the swamp in order to save her family's dynasty of Bigtree alligator wresting. This novel takes us to the swamps of the Florida Everglades, and introduces us to Ava Bigtree, an unforgettable young heroine. The Bigtree alligator wrestling dynasty is in decline, and Swamplandia!, their island home and gator wrestling theme park, formerly no. 1 in the region, is swiftly being encroached upon by a fearsome and sophisticated competitor called the World of Darkness. Ava's mother, the park's indomitable headliner, has just died; her sister, Ossie, has fallen in love with a spooky character known as the Dredgeman, who may or may not be an actual ghost; and her brilliant big brother, Kiwi, who dreams of becoming a scholar, has just defected to the World of Darkness in a last ditch effort to keep their family business from going under. Ava's father, affectionately known as Chief Bigtree, is AWOL; and that leaves Ava, a resourceful but terrified thirteen, to manage ninety eight gators as well as her own grief. Against a backdrop of hauntingly fecund plant life animated by ancient lizards and lawless hungers, the author has written a novel about a family's struggle to stay afloat in a world that is inexorably sinking. Girls Fiction. Mothers Death Fiction. Motherless families Fiction. Amusement parks Fiction. Alligators Fiction. Everglades (Fla) Fiction. Ten Thousand Islands (Fla) Fiction. Fantasy fiction.