Bookplate Author Event: The Crocodile Bride by Ashleigh Bell Pedersen May 22

The Bookplate is continuing their 2024 season of author lectures on May 22nd with novelist Ashleigh Bell Pedersen for a 6pm event at The Kitchen and Pub at The Imperial Hotel.

Set during the swampy summer in 1982, this stunning debut novel follows eleven-year-old Sunshine Turner and her troubled father Billy as the secrets of their family’s past swirl around them in the one-road town of Fingertip, Louisiana. During a hot summer of June moods, grub worms, and dark storms, Sunshine discovers stones in her chest – and learns the dangers her coming-of-age will bring about in the yellow house she shares with her father. Without the vocabulary to comprehend Billy’s actions or her own changing body, Sunshine turns to a story passed down through the generations of the Turner family: in the dark waters of the Black Bayou lives a crocodile with an insatiable appetite, and a woman with a mysterious healing gift. As Sunshine’s summer unspools, she turns to the one person who will need no explanation of the family secrets she carries—the crocodile bride.

The Crocodile Bride is at once a heartbreakingly tender coming-of-age tale and a lyrical, haunting reflection on generational trauma. Reminiscent of Jesmyn Ward and Helen Oyeyemi, Ashleigh Bell Pedersen is a promising new voice in American fiction.

“The brackish setting allows for anger, fear, love and despair to all be felt as one. And the author delicately handles the messy union between human culpability and generational damage.” —Fiona Mozley, The New York Times

“Pedersen’s expert character development and winding plot is aided by short, clipped chapters that bounce back and forth in time, showing the differing perspectives of women in Sunshine’s family. Pedersen skillfully crafts a slow burn of a novel that eventually opens up to expose generations of family secrets, and more importantly, the value of unearthing truth.” —Booklist

“Pedersen’s stunning debut depicts difficult subjects like alcohol addition, domestic violence, and sexual abuse. While Sunshine is the central figure, the legacy of family trauma is told by several generations of Turner women. Ultimately, that trauma can subside when women share their secrets, stumbling over the language needed to tell what happened both around and to them. Fans of fiction about Southern women or about the formative years of girlhood will love this quick, captivating read that tugs at the heartstrings.” —Library Journal

For more event details contact The Bookplate at 410-778-4167 or [email protected]. These events are free and open to the public. The Bookplate will continue their event series with an author lecture at The Kitchen on April 29nd as local poet Sue Ellen Thompson will be discussing her book Sea Nettles. The Kitchen at The Imperial is located at 208 High street in Chestertown, Maryland.