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2000s: A thriller surrounded in mist, dark fog and a very dark heart. Are you brave enough to venture into the woods?
The Marsh King’s Daughter
What you need to know before your trail
Remember those dark fairy tales of your childhood? The children trapped in a forest in the woods, a wolf wanting to eat them, a cage over a boiling cauldron and a wicked witch with a poisoned apple? This is the dark twisted adult version…
Helena was born two years into her mother’s captivity. When the notorious child abductor known as the Marsh King escapes from a maximum security prison, Helena immediately suspects that she and her two young daughters are in danger. No one, not even her husband, knows the truth about Helena’s past: they don’t know that she was born into captivity, that she had no contact with the outside world before the age of twelve – or that her father raised her to be a killer.
And they don’t know that the Marsh King can survive and hunt in the wilderness better than anyone… except, perhaps his own daughter.
Travel Guide
Karen Dionne’s Guide to her literary location
America – Michigan
The Seney National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center – there’s someone on the loose here and it’s not an area where you would want to be if there was a child abductor on the loose. Normally a nice and serene forested area for seeing animals and spending the day but this marshland has some hidden secrets in this story.
The woods and the cabin
Tahquamenon Falls State Park
Ironically the Marsh King keeps his daughter and wife captive in a place called Paradise. It’s a huge marshland and part of the Tahquamenon river basin, some 129 miles of wetland that drain into the river. The Ojibwa call the river “River where the whitefish are found”. There are swamp maples that grow around the cabin and makes it almost invisible by air. Remote and unfindable….
There is a sense of hunting and a huge hunting ground in this novel. The captive becomes the expert hunter when Helena who has had the best training with the worst upbringing turns the tables and sets off on the trail of a prisoner..
Canada
Helena now lives with her family in Sault Ste Marie and it’s a town separated by a river on two sides of both Canada and the USA. She works here in this nice community and lives away from her life in captivity. No one knows who she is and that’s the way she likes it.
Trail Gallery
Booktrailer Review
Susan: @thebooktrailer
There’s a lot to say about this one -it was a chillingly brilliant haunting read.
The Marsh King takes its title from a Hans Christian Anderson fairy story and we all know how dark those fairy tales can get! Well,this book is dark – a girl who was effectively locked up as those two in that gingerbread house in the forest…..
This is a thriller surrounded in mist, dark fog and a very dark heart. Are you brave enough to venture into the woods?
This is the twisted version of that story mind – but the way it’s written captivates you as the fairy tales of yesteryear. There’s evil lurking and there’s a cabin in the woods and you just have to read to find out what happens next…
And it’s in the heart of those woods where evil and more come to play. Helena has an upbringing which is more at home in a very twisted fairy story. She has had the most unconventional of upbringings and now is the hunter, after her father who has escaped from prison. the twists in this are as delicious as that apple in Snow White – and we all know how that panned out!
The key to this novel was Helena and her relationship with both her mother and father. How she now sees the world and how she sees her place in it.
The mix of fairy story, that dark Grimm outlook for those trapped, claustrophobia and the genius of having nature and nurture set up for the battle of their lives makes this a crackling thriller which takes you into the heart of the wicked witch and what really went on in those woods..
Booktrail Boarding Pass Information: The Marsh King’s Daughter
Author/Guide: Karen Dionne Destination: Michigan, Seney, Marquette Departure Time: 2000s
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