Karen Russell was born in Miami and now lives in New York. The novel is predominantly narrated by Ava, who is determined to wrestle as well as her mother and who cares most about the survival of Swamplandia and of her family. The teenage Bigtree children - son Kiwi, daughter Ossie and Ava, the youngest at 13 - all work with the gators. Below her, "dozens of alligators their icicle overbites and the awesome diamonds of their heads through 300,000-plus gallons of filtered water." Hilola's husband, who calls himself Chief Bigtree, provides the dramatic voiceover and follows her with a spotlight to build suspense. Four nights a week, Hilola climbs the ladder above the Gator Pit and takes a daredevil dive into danger. Mom Hilola Bigtree, the "swamp centaur," is the star performer and core of the family business, adept at the arcane art of alligator wrestling. Russell's setting, the outlandish and fading coastal Florida theme park from which the book takes it title, is inhabited by a clan of "Bigtrees," a self-invented showbiz tribe who have no Seminole or Miccosukee blood but adopt the costumes of buckskin vests, headbands, feathers and gator "fang" necklaces nonetheless. Her book has its roots in "Ava Wrestles the Alligator," a short story from her first collection, 2006's St. Stripped down, Swamplandia!, Karen Russell's debut novel, is one more young writer's saga of a dysfunctional family.
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