A year after 16-year-old Ada ran away from home, she must return to Mississippi, to the shabby stilt house and to her vile alcoholic father. In a fit of drunken rage, the man admits he murdered her mother and then makes to murder her, too. She is saved by a young Black woman, 17-year-old Matilda, who strikes the man in the head with a hammer, killing him. Readers then learn her story of the multiple heartbreaking deaths that have visited Matilda's Job-like life, and that one more--her own--may be in jeopardy, for she is the only one who knows the identity of another murderer. Homeless, Matilda moves into the stilt house with a pregnant Ada, who is a bit of a dim bulb, and they carve out a tentative life together until an unfriendly fate intervenes. Somewhere between Southern gothic and melodrama, this first novel, set in the early 1920s, is highly readable, although it requires some willing suspension of disbelief. Nevertheless, the story is redeemed by its period detail and richly realized setting.

Set in the early 1920s, Mustian's remarkable debut focuses on two teenage girls, one white, the other Black, in Mississippi's Natchez Trace. Ada Morgan's trapper father makes most of his money stealing pelts from others' traps and barely puts food on the table; Matilda Patterson is the daughter of a sharecropper who dreams of farming his own plot. Both fathers are under the thumb of a local bootlegger, who puts their families at risk. Ada runs away, following a carnival musician to Louisiana, but returns home after he leaves her. Matilda, who writes newspaper articles about prejudice and poverty in the Deep South under a pseudonym, dreams of joining a friend who lives in Ohio. Brought together by a shocking twist of fate, the girls form an uneasy alliance to survive amid growing racial tension and violence in the Trace. Authentic characters complement the vivid setting--readers will feel the weight of the Trace's humidity--in this nearly flawless tale of loss, perseverance, and redemption. Agent: Peter Steinberg, Foundry Literary + Media. (Apr.)