The Marsh King's Daughter
-
-
4.2 • 712 Ratings
-
-
- $10.99
-
- $10.99
Publisher Description
THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
“Brilliant....About as good as a thriller can be.”—The New York Times Book Review
“[A] nail-biter perfect for Room fans.”—Cosmopolitan
“Sensationally good psychological suspense.”—Lee Child
Praised by Karin Slaughter and Megan Abbott, The Marsh King’s Daughter is the mesmerizing tale of a woman who must risk everything to hunt down the dangerous man who shaped her past and threatens to steal her future: her father.
Helena Pelletier has a loving husband, two beautiful daughters, and a business that fills her days. But she also has a secret: she is the product of an abduction. Her mother was kidnapped as a teenager by her father and kept in a remote cabin in the marshlands of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Helena, born two years after the abduction, loved her home in nature, and despite her father’s sometimes brutal behavior, she loved him, too...until she learned precisely how savage he could be.
More than twenty years later, she has buried her past so soundly that even her husband doesn’t know the truth. But now her father has killed two guards, escaped from prison, and disappeared into the marsh. The police begin a manhunt, but Helena knows they don’t stand a chance. Knows that only one person has the skills to find the survivalist the world calls the Marsh King—because only one person was ever trained by him: his daughter.
A Michigan Notable Book!
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
From page one on, The Marsh King's Daughter features effortless storytelling, a deeply unsettling plot, and tight, twisting suspense. Helena Pelletier, the novel’s intriguing narrator, was born in captivity and keeps the traumatic story of her parentage to herself. But Helena’s father’s looming shadow—and her conflicted feelings toward him—darken every scene, especially when her own young family is thrust into danger. This gripping psychological thriller juxtaposes a sympathetic, relatable protagonist with top-shelf suspense that unfolds in the Michigan wilderness.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Helena Pelletier, Dionne's title character, protagonist, and narrator, is living a happy, uneventful life in Michigan's Upper Peninsula with her husband and two young daughters when that tranquility is shattered by the news that an infamous murderer and child molester has escaped from a nearby prison. Reader Rankin captures all of Helena's fearful concern as she explains that the escapee is her father, Jacob Holbrook, a monster who abducted her mother at age 14 and kept her and Helena captive in a cabin in the middle of an uncultivated, otherwise unpopulated marshland. Actor Rankin moves from present to past effortlessly, switching from the soft-voiced but strong-willed adult Helena, searching for her father, to the confused, troubled, yet adoring child of a mesmerizing madman. She also gives two versions of Jacob: In Helena's memory, the wilderness man sounds powerful and omnipotent and cruel. Newly freed after over a decade of imprisonment, he's croakier, wilier, and unpleasantly ingratiating. As the novel nears the moment when Helena discovers whether the smart but humane daughter can defeat her craftier sociopathic father, Rankin's enactment revs up the tension. A Putnam hardcover.
Customer Reviews
Worth it
It took me a bit to get into this book. Once I did I couldn’t put it down. The 2 lead characters well are complicated. Helena is complex and brilliant.
The Marsh Kings Daughter
This may be the worse book I’ve ever read and I have read hundreds of books.
The Marsh King’s Daughter
Incredible. Read the whole thing in two days- I could not put this book down!