As an English teacher for 25 years, I assigned a lot of reading to a lot of kids! One of them from a few years back recently messaged me on Goodreads to start a conversation about her own reading and mine; she also made a recommendation to me of something she’d really enjoyed. I saw it as not only fair but wonderful, to have a former student “assign” me some reading.

The Marsh King’s Daughter by Karen Dionne was the book she recommended, and I am not disappointed to have taken her up on it, even though Lee Child’s cover blurb of “sensationally good psychological suspense” may have made me less likely, rather than more, to pick it up on my own.

The main character, Helena, is the product of an unusual–criminal, even–pairing. Her father kidnapped her mother at age 14 and literally “took” her for his wife; they lived together in seclusion in the northern woods of the UP (that’s the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, north of Wisconsin) and had then raised Helena there. His parenting practices are extremely questionable, yet Helena sure has little for comparison, given the circumstances. Her mother is not a lot better at it, given her young age, inexperience, and limitations placed on her by her “husband” and their lifestyle.

The novel begins, though, many years later, when Helena’s father escapes from prison. And oh, what tangled ways it moves from there, both in the current search as well as the revealing of the back story of Helena’s childhood and upbringing, chapter by chapter working through both time periods and also braiding in allusive excerpts to Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale by the same title.

While some elements are completely dark and violent, others are homey, even–such as how Helena makes her living (I’ll let you learn for yourself by reading the book), and it doesn’t dwell but moves; it’s got a good share of hope and forgiveness and light.

Whether you are one who’d grab the first thriller you saw or one who would not…possibly at all, I think you’ll find the good writing and great storytelling here to be well worth your reading time.