The marsh queen

Review by Booklist Review

Loni Mae Murrow has been haunted by her father's death since she was 12 years old. Her passion for drawing--and her desire to escape--led her away from her hometown of Tenetkee, Florida. Starting over as an ornithology artist, she now works at the Smithsonian. But when her mother has an accident, Loni's brother wants to move her to assisted living, and Loni must return to Tenetkee to help clear out the house. Loni finds a clue to the true circumstances of her father's death, a letter from a mysterious Henrietta. But with little evidence to go on and a reluctant set of witnesses, Loni flails. Her dogged investigation takes her from an unexpected romance to a dangerous game with a killer. With its atmospheric swampland setting, Hartman's debut brings to mind Delia Owens' blockbuster Where the Crawdads Sing (2018), while the mystery itself is on par with Stacy Willingham's A Flicker in the Dark (2022). While the plot has many different threads to follow, the fast pace and short chapters keep the story moving for an enjoyable ride.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Hartman debuts with a well-crafted and fast-paced family drama set in the Florida panhandle. As a girl raised on the edge of a marsh, Loni Murrow adores her Fish and Game officer father, Boyd. When Loni is 12, Boyd dies in what some insist is a boating accident, though others hint at suicide. Hartman flashes forward to the present day, 25 years later, with Loni working at the Smithsonian as a bird artist. When her brother, Phil, summons her to deal with their mother, Ruth, who has a broken wrist and possible dementia, Loni is plunged back into the small town she had hoped to leave behind. Phil and his hairdresser wife are moving Ruth into assisted living much too expeditiously for Loni's taste, and selling Ruth's house. Loni's attraction to a canoe-rental proprietor, comforting visits with her dad's avuncular former boss, and illustration work offered by her best friend at a science museum in Tallahassee keep her grounded as she investigates Boyd's death, prompted by a mysterious letter found at Ruth's house. The closer she gets to the truth, the more someone tries to scare her away with disturbing anonymous threats. Hartman's depiction of the natural setting show her to be a talented writer, as do the well-executed takes on museum work, botany, and ornithology. Readers will hope to see Loni back for more. (Sept.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

DEBUT Hartman's first novel is interwoven with strong natural history themes, evoking the works of Barbara Kingsolver. Raised in the swamps of northern Florida, Loni Mae is now a bird artist with a plum job at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC. When her mother starts showing signs of dementia, she returns to her hometown to help her brother sort through their mother's belongings, all the while stumbling over clues that seem to indicate their father's decades-ago death wasn't a suicide. On a quickly diminishing family leave, Loni Mae is unable to chart a path forward. She goes about her disorganized days juggling family expectations, questioning townsfolk about her father's death, sketching birds, and skittishly avoiding romance with a local man. The nonlinear story line is interspersed with long passages on drawing birds, the Floridian swamp, and gardening lore. Four-fifths of the way through the book, the action suddenly picks up when Loni Mae uncovers town secrets that threaten her understanding of the past. Her subsequent undertakings occur at an incongruously breakneck pace before the story wraps up a little too neatly with a family gathering at the nursing home. VERDICT Recommended for those who prefer happy endings.--Erin O. Romanyshyn

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

A dutiful family visit propels a young woman into the dark mysteries of her past. Loni Murrow loves her job as an ornithological illustrator for the Smithsonian, where she has dreamed of working since girlhood. Raised in the tiny Florida Panhandle town of Tenetkee, she high-tailed out of there as soon as she was old enough. She and her mother, Ruth, never got along, especially after Loni's father, Boyd, died when she was 12. His death was ruled an accidental drowning, but the Florida Fish & Game agent and inveterate angler knew the waters better than anyone, and rumors swirl. Loni reluctantly takes a leave from work and heads south after her mother breaks her wrist in a fall. When she gets to Tenetkee, she discovers her earnest younger brother, Phil, and his bossy wife, Tammy, have already stuck Mom in assisted living and found tenants for her house. Oh, and Ruth is well along into dementia, her house is a wreck, her memory's intermittent, and her attitude toward her daughter is as mean as ever. Loni hopes to get her settled and return to Washington quickly, but a mysterious note she finds in Ruth's suitcase sends her looking for the truth about Boyd. She looks for answers from his former boss, the kindly Capt. Chappelle, and other friends and neighbors. But someone who doesn't appreciate her investigation vandalizes her car. As Tenetkee grows to seem more ominous than laid back, Loni finds solace in canoeing its waterways--and in a growing friendship with Adlai Brinkert, the handsome fellow who owns the canoe rental shop. The book's lyrical evocations of natural Florida, beautiful but perilous, ring true, as does its depiction of the entanglements of small-town life. Family dynamics are a strong point, and the author builds suspense skillfully as Loni unearths connections between past and present that could be lethal. This debut novel, set in rural Florida, deftly combines family drama and tense thriller. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Chapter 1 1 If I were a different person, I could move forward and never look back, never try to fathom the forces that shaped me for the worse. But there are times when a fog rolls in, slow as dusk, beginning with a nodule of regret. I should have, why didn't I, if only. I replay the day my father left us for good, the sun showing orange through the live oak, him pacing at the bottom of the porch steps, twelve-year-old me looking down with my baby brother, Philip, on one hip. I winced as I gently extracted a strand of my dark brown hair from his doughy little grasp. Daddy bounced his feet on the bottom step and squinted up. "Look, darlin'. Miss Joleen next door can help your mama with the baby. So how's about it, Loni Mae? You comin' with me?" My dad hadn't gone fishing in months. But he'd grown restless, knocking into furniture and slamming the screen door. There was a thrumming in the house like the wind before a storm. That day, my mother said, "Boyd, go on! You're pacing the house like a caged animal." I'd have given almost anything to be out fishing in the swamp with him, to draw every creature I saw, to watch and listen as before. But how could I? I had to stay. Now that Philip was here, I served a purpose in my house. I held him while my mother talked on the phone, while she rested or did housework. I knew how to make him laugh those hiccupy laughs. He was my after-school activity, my weekend amusement, my part-time job. My mother no longer shook her head at my hopelessness, nor raised her eyes to heaven. Daddy turned, and his boots crunched gravel. He retrieved his fishing pole and tackle from the garage. I put the tip of my braid in my mouth and sucked it to a fine point as he walked out to the end of the dock, his khaki vest sagging with lead weights and lures, the tackle box a drag on his left arm. He turned and looked back for a minute, tilting his head so his face caught the light. I put my hand up to wave, but a shaft of sun was in his eyes, and he didn't see. He swiveled back toward the jon boat, stepped in, and he was gone. He could have slept at the fishing camp, that faded two-room cabin that stuck out over a muddy bank, or he might have gone on patrol right after his swamp time. But on Monday morning, his Fish & Game uniform still hung in the closet at home, pressed and waiting. Around three, my dad's boss stopped over. Captain Chappelle was tall and fit in his khaki uniform, his boots clunking up the porch steps. My mother was out the door before he'd reached the top stair. "Hello, Ruth. Just came by to see if Boyd was sick or what." My mother turned to me. "Go on, Loni. Get to your chores." Two vertical lines between her eyebrows told me not to argue. I couldn't hear what they said, though from the kitchen I strained to make words from the low tones in the Florida room. I wiped the last dish and heard Captain Chappelle's truck kicking up gravel in the driveway. The weather turned cool that night, sweatshirt weather, and still Daddy didn't return. Long after I'd gone to bed, I heard voices and went to the top of the stairs. "I shoulda seen it, Ruth." It was a man's voice--Captain Chappelle. The Florida room's square panes of glass would be black now, the marsh invisible behind them. The darkened banister glowed with the light from downstairs, and Captain Chappelle's voice rippled with a watery sound. "Boyd hadn't been himself lately. I just never thought he'd go and--" "No," my mother said. "Had he been acting strangely around home? Depressed? Because these last few weeks--" "No," she said louder. Captain Chappelle's voice dropped to a murmur, but words floated up to me. Drowned... intentional... weighted down... My mother kept repeating, "No." "We'll fix it up, Ruth. Boating accidents happen every day." "Not to my Boyd." At the funeral home, I stepped away from the varnished wood box and listened. Such a terrible accident. What a shame. It could happen to anybody, out in a boat. You just never know when it's your time. So it was an accident. Those other words, floating up along the staircase, had just been a bad dream. After the funeral, my mother and I took Philip home and we didn't talk about Daddy. If we didn't speak his name, maybe we could erase the knowledge that he'd never come back. Excerpted from The Marsh Queen by Virginia Hartman All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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