Hot Off the Shelf: The Crocodile Bride by Ashleigh Bell Pedersen

[image description: The book cover for The Crocodile Bride, which has an abstract painted crocodile across a black background with the author’s name and title written in blocky script.]
Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. I honestly loved it! If you’d like a copy for yourself, there’s an affiliate link to Bookshop, an Amazon alternative that supports indie bookstores, below.

This review doesn’t have any spoilers, so you can read on with confidence.

When I lived in Alabama, I didn’t care much for Southern literature. I was surrounded by the South every day, sometimes claustrophobically so, and I wanted to read for escape. But ever since I moved to Ohio, I can’t get enough Southern literature. With distance, I’m finally able to appreciate the kinds of stories that always felt just a little too close to home.

Although I didn’t grow up in a one-road town in rural Louisiana, The Crocodile Bride rang true for me. The abandonment of one parent, the instability of the remaining parent, having to navigate a parent’s addiction and mental illness, hitting puberty and not knowing what on earth was happening because adults were too embarrassed and prudish to just explain what puberty was… and, of course, the legends of creatures as old as time itself that live in the woods.

Before I dive in further, the synopsis:

Set during the swampy summer in 1982, this stunning debut novel follows eleven-year-old Sunshine Turner and her troubled father Billy as the secrets of their family’s past swirl around them in the one-road town of Fingertip, Louisiana.

During a hot summer of June moods, grubworms, and dark storms, Sunshine discovers stones in her chest – and learns the dangers her coming-of-age will bring about in the yellow house she shares with her father. Without the vocabulary to comprehend Billy’s actions or her own changing body, Sunshine turns to an apocryphal story passed down from her grandmother: in the dark waters of the Black Bayou lives a crocodile with an insatiable appetite and a woman with a mysterious healing gift. As Sunshine’s summer unspools, she turns to the one person who will need no explanation of the family secrets she carries—the crocodile bride.

The Crocodile Bride is at once a heartbreakingly tender coming-of-age tale and a lyrical, haunting reflection on generational trauma. Reminiscent of Jesmyn Ward and Helen Oyeyemi, Ashleigh Bell Pedersen is a promising new voice in American fiction.

First, I have to commend an author who can write about girlhood on the cusp of puberty and make it authentic and real. I’ve read a number of books where that tender age is portrayed in some kind of moralistic way––like it’s somehow the girl’s fault that grown men are staring at her and she doesn’t fully understand what’s happening to her changing body. It especially pisses me off when the girl dies at the end. I’m happy to report that there’s no moralizing here.

Maybe it sounds trite to say, but more than anything I think The Crocodile Bride is about breaking generational curses. Pedersen does a masterful job at showing how trauma is inherited and builds in future generations like compound interest until someone decides they’ve had enough and the dysfunction can’t go on. Sunshine’s father, Billy, is the last in a long line of abusive men, and his sister, Sunshine’s aunt Lou, is the last in a long line of passive, subservient women. When Lou decides she’s had enough, she prevents Sunshine from ever having to make that decision in the future. In breaking the generational curse, Lou shows the difference that one person can make.

As you probably gathered from the synopsis, The Crocodile Bride is pretty dark and depressing at times––and with the world in the state it’s in, I’m not exactly inclined toward dark and depressing stories these days. However, what kept me reading was that there’s a strong undercurrent of hope. This hope is so palpable, even in the worst moments, that it never occurred to me that the novel wouldn’t have a happy ending. That’s what propelled me through and made it possible to love this novel despite the stressors of the world.

Besides the hope, I was also taken in by the mythology around the crocodile bride. Growing up in the South, I know that every family and every small town has its legends that are passed down from generation to generation. Even if the adults don’t believe the stories themselves, kids believe them and are always trying to suss out the truth of them and test the limits of the mythology for themselves. The local folklore threaded throughout the narrative served as a fascinating parallel for Sunshine’s family, as well as an anchor for Sunshine (and her family members when they were young) to try to make sense of the world.

And is that not what folklore is for at the end of the day? When I think about why we tell stories and the rich storytelling traditions of every culture around the world, it all comes back to that: an attempt to make sense of the world. Perhaps in a meta sense, that’s what The Crocodile Bride the novel does too. Since it so stirringly and genuinely articulates transgenerational trauma, I could see it helping someone who didn’t have the vocabulary to explain their own family’s dysfunction make sense of their experiences. If my own family weren’t so far gone and it wasn’t too little, too late––and if I actually believed they’d listen––I might shove this book in their hands and hope they had the sense to get something out of it.

Then again, that’s my own attempt at moralizing a story, which I think is people’s natural inclination to do, especially given the nature of storytelling. Often, to make sense of the world means deriving an understanding of needed behavior and living by a code, whether religious or not. It’s as Maya Angelou said, “When you know better, you do better.” There’s historical precedent for storytelling as a means of altering behavior to keep both the individual and the community safe.

While perhaps there’s still a time and place for moralistic stories, I’m all the more delighted and impressed when I find a story that’s told in an emotionally compelling way without the moralizing. The Crocodile Bride is just that. Bad shit happens to people. It sucks and they don’t deserve it. So it goes.

Some might think the ending (which I’m not going to spoil here) is a form of moralizing because, arguably, the character gets what the character deserves, but I’d say that the outcome is more reflective of the character’s self-destructive tendencies than any kind of divine retribution. But that’s just me.

Overall, I super enjoyed The Crocodile Bride. It’s Ashleigh Bell Pedersen’s first book and I’m already looking forward to her next one. The novel is also published by Hub City Press, an indie publisher I really like that focuses on stories from the South. I’ve never read anything of theirs that I didn’t like.

If you’d like a copy of The Crocodile Bride for yourself, I’d love for you to buy a copy using my Bookshop link. Bookshop is an Amazon alternative that supports indie bookstores and this blog.