She currently lives near the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina. She forms a plan to go north, to pack up the secrets she's holding about her life in the South and hang them on the line for all to see in Ohio. As the two girls are drawn deeper into a dangerous world of bootleggers and moral corruption, they must come to terms with the complexities of their tenuous bond and a hidden past that links them in ways that could cost them their lives. This information about The Girls in the Stilt House was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication.
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The novel’s structure, alternating chapters of Ada’s and Mattie’s stories, nicely supports this underlying theme. Although Ada’s narrative is presented first and Mattie’s second, Mattie’s is foundational. Because of her own father’s risks for a better life, Mattie realizes the reality and threat of Virgil Morgan and what he represents even before Ada.
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About the Author
Set in 1920s Mississippi, this debut Southern novel weaves a beautiful and harrowing story of two young women cast in an unlikely partnership through murder. While the novel’s first chapter lags a bit, the prologue creates a strong narrative pull, and as the story unfolds, the plot tightens and accelerates without sacrificing the development of the storyline or the characters. The distant third person omniscient perspective that alternates largely between Ada and Matilda underscores that only by living and working side by side can these diverse young women find new lives and a greater purpose.
Kelly Mustian
Her work has appeared in numerous literary journals and commercial magazines, and her short fiction has won a Blumenthal Writers and Readers Series Award. She is a past recipient of a Regional Artist Grant from the North Carolina Arts and Science Council. Kelly currently lives with her family near the foothills of North Carolina. Matilda, daughter of a sharecropper, is from the other side of the Trace. She forms a plan to go north, to pack up the secrets she’s holding about her life in the South and hang them on the line for all to see in Ohio.
The individual and shared needs and sorrows of the girls’ past, present, and future could pit them against each other but unite them instead. Yet the bond is fragile, with each girl now complementing, now countering the other. Still, the two young women, one black, one white, need each other, for the very fact of their differences as the past they had hoped to escape confronts them with ominous new challenges they must face separately and together to survive. After heartbreak and disappointment in Baton Rouge, Ada Morgan has no choice but to return to the life she swore to leave. As she labors to tidy her father’s unkempt house in the dismal Trace before his return, Ada hopes for change. But when Virgil Morgan arrives, he resets the old, ruthless standards.
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. She is originally from Natchez, Mississippi, and currently lives near the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina. Kelly Mustian grew up in Natchez, Mississippi, the southern terminus of the historic Natchez Trace.
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"Remarkable debut.... [a] nearly flawless tale of loss, perseverance and redemption."—Publishers Weekly, STARRED reviewPerfect for readers of Where The Crawdads Sing! But now, after running away to Baton Rouge and briefly knowing a different kind of life, she finds herself with nowhere to go but back home. And she knows there will be a price to pay with her father.Matilda, daughter of a sharecropper, is from the other side of the Trace. Doing what she can to protect her family from the whims and demands of some particularly callous locals is an ongoing struggle. 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.
When he realizes the secret Ada is carrying, the only change that seems possible for anyone in the marsh is for the worse. As Virgil comes at Ada with deadly intent, Matilda appears, seemingly out of nowhere, to help.
To that end, the past, present, and future are inextricably linked in the storyline but not in ways the characters or the readers necessarily understand in the moment. Still, the strands yield more than the twining of the individual threads, and the setting of the Trace is deftly woven in as a character of mood and mystery that both hides and reveals its secrets. Ada promised herself she would never go back to the Trace, to her hard life on the swamp and her harsh father. But now, after running away and briefly knowing a different kind of life, she finds herself with nowhere to go but back home. Reading Group Choices selects discussible books and suggests discussion topics for reading groups. Matilda Patterson is the 16-year-old daughter of sharecropper Dalton and his wife, Teensy.
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.
Set in 1920s Mississippi, this debut Southern novel weaves a beautiful and harrowing story of two teenage girls cast in an unlikely partnership through murder—perfect for readers of Where the Crawdads Sing and If the Creek Don’t Rise. Set in 1920s Mississippi, this debut Southern novel weaves a beautiful and harrowing story of two teenage girls cast in an unlikely partnership through murder—perfect for readers of Where the Crawdads Sing and If the Creek Don't Rise. Set in 1920s Mississippi, this debut Southern novel weaves a beautiful and harrowing story of two teenage girls cast in an unlikely partnership through murder. Her work has appeared in numerous literary journals and commercial magazines, and she is a past recipient of a Blumenthal Writers Award and a Regional Artist Grant from the North Carolina Arts and Science Council.
And as Mattie’s best friend leaves the Trace for the kind of life and work Mattie longs for, she knows that if there is hope for her own future, she must maintain the bonds of friendship. Hereafter, Ada carries Mattie’s familial legacy where the Pattersons no longer can, and Ada realizes that she must confront and vanquish a man far more dangerous even than her father for the antiquated laws he represents that must be abolished. Longing, aspiration, and murder converge in rural 1920s Mississippi to link and forever shape the lives of two diverse teenage girls in Kelly Mustian’s haunting debut novel, The Girls in the Stilt House. BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
Little did he know that he had started his own family with Ada, whom he left completely bereft and a few months pregnant with his child. The Girls in the Stilt House is a perceptive, compelling, fabulous debut by Mustian that is an excellent reminder that compassion, kindness, and strength come in many forms that ultimately transcend socioeconomics, skin colour, and the deepest, darkest of realities. The work of author Kelly Mustian has appeared in various literary journals and magazines. She is a past recipient of a Blumenthal Writers Award and a Regional Artist Grant from the North Carolina Arts and Science Council. But the independent and self-sufficient Mattie needs a place to stay and shelter from her own storms. Seemingly Ada’s salvation, Mattie has demons to excise as well.
Debut novelist Wenyan Lu brings us this witty yet profound story about one woman's midlife reawakening in contemporary rural China. Type in a keyword, phrase, or exact wording and you will be directed to the results. You can also click on “view all books” beneath the search box to run a more advanced search, and to scroll through all of the books in our database. Matilda herself has dreams of joining her friend, Rainey, in Cleveland, Ohio, where Rainey has an uncle who owns and runs a Black newspaper.
They live on the other side of the Trace, where the population is mostly the Black people who toil on local farms. Dalton works on Curtis Creedle’s farm, and his dream is to eventually buy his own piece of land for his family. He agrees to store and deliver illegal moonshine to locals for his boss, who promises to forgive his debt at the end of one year.
She has been saving every dime she can by taking on extra work in addition to what she’s been doing in the fields. This move will have to wait until her mother delivers her latest baby and is back up on her feet. But when a violent incident propels these two girls together, plans to leave are jettisoned and replaced with the simple act of survival. Teenager Ada Morgan has just done what she had sworn she would never do. She’s returning to the Trace after a disastrous year-long affair with a traveling musician who swept her off her feet and to Baton Rouge until he informed her that he was moving back to Texas to be with his family.
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