Sweetgirl has us excited here on the Library Marketing team. A stunning debut set in the snowy isolation of Northern Michigan, Travis Mulhauser weaves an emotional story of love and survival that runs at breakneck speed, with rich atmosphere and unique characters sure to resonate with fans of Winter’s Bone and Fargo.
Sixteen-year-old protagonist Percy’s chapters, told from first-person perspective, are lush with hard-earned insight and resilient glimmers of hope. Things move quickly from Percy’s search for her wayward meth-addict mother, to her rescue of the baby girl of local terror/drug dealer Shelton Potter, to her flight across the wilderness, a “nor’easter” dangerously looming. Yet via third-person limited narration, Mulhauser also delves into the mind of Shelton Potter on his drug-fueled hunt for his child. Terrifying in ways you might expect (he’s a meth-addict who left his infant alone in a freezing room!), Mulhauser injects moments of humanity and even poetry into Shelton’s drug-addled passages that as a reader challenged my desire to hate him from the darkest reaches of my heart.
Ron Rash states, “Sweetgirl is a gritty, compelling novel of a world where even a sixteen-year-old must confront what Edith Wharton called ‘the hard considerations of the poor.’ Mulhauser depicts his people and their landscape with uncompromising fidelity.” Sweetgirl’s multiple perspectives are masterfully realized, the setting integral and fierce, and the journey one we highly recommend you join. Click here to download an egalley from Edelweiss.
If you are a public librarian who is not already white-listed, send us an email at librarylovefest@harpercollins.com from the email address you used to register with Edelweiss, and we will add you to our VIP list.
-Chris