I spent two years of my childhood in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and I returned about a decade ago for a brief visit. What struck me then is the same thing that might strike readers of Karen Dionne’s new suspense novel, THE MARSH KING’S DAUGHTER, which is set in the UP: its remoteness and wildness. There are towns, to be sure, and hospitals --- even colleges and universities --- but with its low (human) population density and relatively high concentration of animals like wolves and bears, the UP feels in places like a true wilderness.

Few people know that wilderness as well as Helena Pelletier. Now a wife and mother to two young girls, Helena contributes to the family income by selling delicious jams and jellies that she makes from fruit and berries foraged from around the UP. She acquired her foraging abilities, along with numerous other survival tactics and wilderness skills, from her father, about whom she has told her husband virtually nothing.

"THE MARSH KING’S DAUGHTER is both suspenseful and deeply evocative, the kind of novel that begs to be read in a single sitting --- but possibly not the best choice for a vacation in the north woods, at least not if you want to sleep at night."

Why is her father such a secret? Because he has spent the last many years in a maximum-security prison, incarcerated for the kidnapping of Helena’s mother, who he abducted when she was just 14. He lured her in with a cover story about a missing dog, took her to a remote cabin deep in the marsh, and kept her (and, subsequently, their daughter) there for over a decade.

As the novel opens, however, Helena learns that her father has just escaped from prison, attacking two guards with a knife made from hardened and sharpened toilet paper. The authorities believe they know which way the escaped convict is headed, but Helena still knows her father better than anyone and is confident that he has intentionally sent the police barking up the wrong tree.

Terrified for the safety of her family, Helena sets off to find her father herself; ironically, the skills she learned from this man she now loathes might be exactly what are most needed to defeat him. As she tracks him through the forests and marsh, increasingly fearful for her and her family’s safety, Helena casts her mind back to her own childhood, to a time when --- because she didn’t know any other reality --- she loved, even idolized, the father who was, unbeknownst to her, a monster and a criminal.

THE MARSH KING’S DAUGHTER travels fluidly back and forth in time, alternating between scenes from Helena’s childhood and her growing awareness of a world outside their remote, intentionally secluded existence, and scenes from the present day, showing a Helena confident in her abilities and hell-bent on revenge. Also interspersed are passages from Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale that gives the novel its title, a somewhat obscure story that bears many parallels to Helena’s personal history.

Helena’s story of extreme isolation and brutality followed by survival and resilience is one that will appeal to fans of Emma Donoghue’s ROOM. Both Helena and her father are intense and fascinating characters, more similar than Helena might consciously want to admit. If there’s one cipher that still remains after the novel’s satisfying close, it’s Helena’s mother, who we know only through Helena’s own youthful memories and died under unknown circumstances before the present-day scenes. Readers might find themselves both sympathizing with and longing to understand this young woman, who at times feels lost in the intensity between Helena and her father. But that’s a minor quibble.

THE MARSH KING’S DAUGHTER is both suspenseful and deeply evocative, the kind of novel that begs to be read in a single sitting --- but possibly not the best choice for a vacation in the north woods, at least not if you want to sleep at night.