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Loni must decide whether to delve beneath the surface into murky half-truths and either avenge the past or bury it, once and for all.
“For fans of Where the Crawdads Sing, this âmarvelous debutâ (Alice McDermott, National Book Awardâwinning author of The Ninth Hour) follows a Washington, DC, artist as she faces her past and the secrets held in the waters of Floridaâs lush swamps and wetlands.
Loni Murrow is an accomplished bird artist at the Smithsonian who loves her job. But when she receives a call from her younger brother summoning her back home to help their obstinate mother recover after an accident, Loniâs neat, contained life in Washington, DC, is thrown into chaos, and she finds herself exactly where she does not want to be.
Going through her motherâs things, Loni uncovers scraps and snippets of a time in her life she would prefer to forgetâa childhood marked by her father Boydâs death by drowning and her mother Ruthâs persistent bad mood. When Loni comes across a single, cryptic note from a strangerââThere are some things I have to tell you about Boydâs deathââ she begins a dangerous quest to discover the truth, all the while struggling to reconnect with her mother and reconcile with her brother and his wife, who seem to thwart her at every turn. To make matters worse, she meets a man in Florida whose attractive simple charm threatens everything sheâs worked toward.
Pulled between worldsâher professional accomplishments in Washington, and the small town of her childhoodâLoni must decide whether to delve beneath the surface into murky half-truths and either avenge the past or bury it, once and for all.
The Marsh Queen explores what it means to be a daughter and how we protect the ones we love. Suzanne Feldman, author of Sisters of the Great War, writes that âfans of Delia Owens and Lauren Groff will find this a wonderful and absorbing read.â”
Don't just take our word for it...
âWith its atmospheric swampland setting, Hartmanâs debut brings to mind Delia Owens’ blockbuster Where the Crawdads Sing (2018), while the mystery itself is on par with Stacy Willinghamâs A Flicker in the Dark (2022) . . . [T]he fast pace and short chapters keep the story moving for an enjoyable ride.â
– Booklist
âSteeped in the lush rhythms and murky shadows of the Florida Wetlands, Virginia Hartmanâs The Marsh Queen is at once a gripping mystery, a devastating family drama, a romance, and a tribute to the natural world. Loni Murrow is a character who will stay with me for a long time. An astonishing debut.â
– Lara Prescott, author of The Secrets We Kept
âLoni Murrow, the protagonist in Virginia Hartman’s harrowing urban-rural novel, knows that it’s not that you canât go home again, but what wretched truths might await you there. In The Marsh Queen there are stories within stories, there are stunning family secrets, there’s an almost gothic sĂ©ance atmosphereâall of that is beautifully orchestrated. But at heart this novel is a kind of mythic journey; let’s call it The Daughter’s Search for Truth, Love and Redemption.â
– Howard Norman, author of Next Life Might Be Kinder
Taste the very first page
If I were a different person, I could move forward and never look back, never try to fathom the forces that shaped me for the worse. But there are times when a fog rolls in, slow as dusk, beginning with a nodule of regret. I should have, why didnât I, if only. I replay the day my father left us for good, the sun showing orange through the live oak, him pacing at the bottom of the porch steps, twelve-year-old me looking down with my baby brother, Philip, on one hip. I winced as I gently extracted a strand of my dark brown hair from his doughy little grasp.
Daddy bounced his feet on the bottom step and squinted up. âLook, darlinâ. Miss Joleen next door can help your mama with the baby. So howâs about it, Loni Mae? You cominâ with me?â
My dad hadnât gone fishing in months. But heâd grown restless, knocking into furniture and slamming the screen door. There was a thrumming in the house like the wind before a storm.
That day, my mother said, âBoyd, go on! Youâre pacing the house like a caged animal.â
Iâd have given almost anything to be out fishing in the swamp with him, to draw every creature I saw, to watch and listen as before. But how could I? I had to stay. Now that Philip was here, I served a purpose in my house. I held him while my mother talked on the phone, while she rested or did housework. I knew how to make him laugh those…
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