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Readers' rating:
Published Feb 2020
416 pages
Genre: Thrillers
Publication Information
A "lush nightmare" (Paul Tremblay) of a supernatural thriller about a young woman facing down ancient forces in the depths of the bayou.
Ever since her father was killed when she was just a child, Miranda Crabtree has kept her head down and her eyes up, ferrying contraband for a mad preacher and his declining band of followers to make ends meet and to protect an old witch and a secret child from harm.
But dark forces are at work in the bayou, both human and supernatural, conspiring to disrupt the rhythms of Miranda's peculiar and precarious life. And when the preacher makes an unthinkable demand, it sets Miranda on a desperate, dangerous path, forcing her to consider what she is willing to sacrifice to keep her loved ones safe.
With the heady mythmaking of Neil Gaiman and the heartrending pacing of Joe Hill, Andy Davidson spins a thrilling tale of love and duty, of loss and discovery. The Boatman's Daughter is a gorgeous, horrifying novel, a journey into the dark corners of human nature, drawing our worst fears and temptations out into the light.
"The book's lightning-fast pace doesn't come at the expense of fully realized, flawed, and achingly human characters. Ample bloodshed is offset by beautiful prose, and the bad guys are really, really bad...A stunning supernatural Southern gothic." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"With fluid prose and nimble worldbuilding Davidson brings his eerie swamps to life. Fans of the supernatural will savor the slow-burning tension of this heady, atmospheric Southern gothic." - Publishers Weekly
"What if I told you there was a gorgeously written novel that mixed Southern Gothic à la Flannery O'Connor, backwoods noir, and the mythic imagination of Clive Barker? Go read Andy Davidson's lush nightmare, The Boatman's Daughter. It put an arrow through my head and heart." - Paul Tremblay, author of The Cabin at the End of the World and A Head Full of Ghosts
"The Boatman's Daughter is a beautifully written Gothic chiller that will draw you in and hold you tight. Wild and wonderful—a sentence-by-sentence delight." - Michael Koryta, author of How It Happened
"Andy Davidson's bone-cracking Southern Gothic, The Boatman's Daughter, is a noir thriller dipped in the dark mud of the bayou, packed with witches, demons, and gods. I was entangled in the dense roots of the story and the rich, aromatic prose from page one. A riveting, powerful, bloody ride you'll never want to leave, despite the dangers within." - Philip Fracassi, author of Behold the Void
This information about The Boatman's Daughter 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.
Andy Davidson holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Mississippi. His debut novel, In the Valley of the Sun, was nominated for the 2017 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel, This Is Horror's Novel of the Year, and the 2018 Edinburgh International Book Festival's First Book Award. Born and raised in Arkansas, he now makes his home in Georgia with his wife and a bunch of cats.
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