A short fantasy by Hans Christian Andersen, also titled "The Marsh King's Daughter," is the source of the book's title. That story weaves through the book. The opening of Andersen's story forms the prologue of this book. The first actual chapter starts like this:
Book Beginning:
Helena
If I told you my mother's name, you'd recognize it right away. My mother was famous, though she never wanted to be. Hers wasn't the kind of fame anyone would wish for. Jaycee Dugard, Amanda Berry, Elizabeth Smart - that kind of thing, though my mother was none of them.
You'd recognize my mother's name if I told it to you, and then you'd wonder - briefly, because the years when people cared about my mother are long gone, as she is - where is she now? And didn't she have a daughter while she was missing? And whatever happened to the little girl?
Friday 56 from 56% on my Kindle:
The ice moved up and down as I walked, like the river was breathing, like it was a living thing and it was offended by this arrogant human girl-child who dared to walk across its frozen surface. I imagined the River Spirit reaching an icy hand up out of the water from one of the many gaps in the ice, grabbing my ankle, and pulling me in.
Genre: Psychological Suspense
Length: 314 Pages
Amazon Link: The Marsh King's Daughter
I borrowed this ebook from my local library.
Synopsis (from Amazon):
Helena Pelletier has a loving husband, two beautiful daughters, and a business that fills her days. But she also has a secret: she is the product of an abduction. Her mother was kidnapped as a teenager by her father and kept in a remote cabin in the marshlands of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Helena, born two years after the abduction, loved her home in nature, and despite her father’s sometimes brutal behavior, she loved him, too...until she learned precisely how savage he could be.
More than twenty years later, she has buried her past so soundly that even her husband doesn’t know the truth. But now her father has killed two guards, escaped from prison, and disappeared into the marsh. The police begin a manhunt, but Helena knows they don’t stand a chance. Knows that only one person has the skills to find the survivalist the world calls the Marsh King—because only one person was ever trained by him: his daughter.
