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by Travis Mulhauser
A blistering debut about a fearless sixteen-year old girl whose search for her missing mother leads to an unexpected discovery, and a life or death struggle in the harsh frozen landscape of the Upper Midwest.
With the heart, daring, and evocative atmosphere of Winter's Bone and True Grit, and driven by the raw, whip-smart voice of Percy James, a blistering debut about a fearless sixteen-year old girl whose search for her missing mother leads to an unexpected discovery, and a life or death struggle in the harsh frozen landscape of the Upper Midwest.
As a blizzard bears down, Percy James sets off to find her troubled mother, Carletta. For years, Percy has had to take care of herself and Mama - a woman who's been unraveling for as long as her daughter can remember. Fearing Carletta is strung out on meth and that she won't survive the storm, Percy heads for Shelton Potter's cabin, deep in the woods of Northern Michigan. A two-bit criminal, as incompetent as he his violent, Shelton has been smoking his own cook and grieving the death of his beloved Labrador, Old Bo.
But when Percy arrives, there is no sign of Carletta. Searching the house, she finds Shelton and his girlfriend drugged into oblivion - and a crying baby girl left alone in a freezing room upstairs. From the moment the baby wraps a tiny hand around her finger, Percy knows she must save her - a split-second decision that is the beginning of a dangerous odyssey in which she must battle the elements and evade Shelton and a small band of desperate criminals, hell-bent on getting that baby back.
Knowing she and the child cannot make it alone, Percy seeks help from Carletta's ex, Portis Dale, who is the closest thing she's ever had to a father. As the storm breaks and violence erupts, Percy will be forced to confront the haunting nature of her mother's affliction and finds her own fate tied more and more inextricably to the baby she is determined to save.
Filled with the sweeping sense of cultural and geographic isolation of its setting - the hills of fictional Cutler County in northern Michigan - and told in Percy's unflinching style, Sweetgirl is an affecting exploration of courage, sacrifice, and the ties that bind - a taut and darkly humorous tour-de-force that is horrifying, tender, and hopeful.
"Though it is more melancholy in tone, but with a strong-willed young female protagonist of its own, Sweetgirl may remind some readers of Charles Portis' True Grit; indeed, one of the principal characters is named Portis in an apparent homage. However, this fine novel stands on its own merits." - Booklist
"...the novel succeeds as a coming-of-age story when Percy, having survived grisly violence and abysmal loss, experiences a realization about how to shape her future." - Publishers Weekly
"Though it never fully escapes the shadow of Woodrell's famous novel, this title boasts fine writing and memorable characters, making it a solid pick for readers who enjoy Woodrell or Tom Franklin." - Library Journal
"Only a reader who is willing to believe that any teenager has ever expressed...folksy eloquence... is capable of appreciating this book. Maybe enjoy a Coen brothers double feature - Raising Arizona and Fargo - instead." - Kirkus
"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." - Ron Rash
"Travis Mulhauser's Sweetgirl is a riveting novel about a bunch of drug addicts and drug dealers and boozers and quasi-orphans and quasi-parents dealing with the prospect of a missing baby girl during a massive snowstorm in northern Michigan. This sounds grim, and it can be grim, but this book is also far, far funnier than it has any right to be. If you're a fan of Charles Portis and Denis Johnson - and if you're not, you should be - then this is book is exactly what you've been wanting, what you've been waiting for." - Brock Clarke, author of The Happiest People in the World
"There's a big old neon heart pulsing on every page of Sweetgirl, like the sign to a bar you can't help but enter. I felt thrilled and shocked, and I couldn't stop turning the pages. Travis Mulhauser is a writer to be reckoned with." - Lindsay Hunter, author of Ugly Girls and Don't Kiss Me
"This novel comes on like the blizzard at its center, and leaves you dazzled and dazed not only by how much Travis Mulhauser knows, but how deeply he cares." - Michael Parker, author of All I Have in This World
"To try to nail down what Mulhauser is doing in Sweetgirl - to say it's a comedy or a tragedy - is to do the book a grave disservice. It's far too large of heart and full of ambition to call it any one thing. Like its young narrator, Sweetgirl seeks first and foremost - and, finally, only - the truth. It is a beautiful, harrowing, startling achievement. And it's one hell of a great story." - Drew Perry, author of Kids These Days
This information about Sweetgirl 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. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Travis Mulhauser is from Petoskey, Michigan. He currently lives in Durham, North Carolina, with his wife and two children.
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