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In celebration of Independent Bookstore Day, shop our limited-time sale on bestselling audiobooks from April 22nd-28th. Don’t miss out—purchases support your local bookstore!
Shop nowThe Crocodile Bride
Narrator
Gail Shalan
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Length
10 hours 35 minutes
Language
English
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.
Contains mature themes.
Ashleigh Bell Pedersen's fiction has been featured in New Stories from the South, the Kenyon Review, the Iowa Review, Design Observer, The Silent History, A Strange Object, and the New York Public Library's Library Simplified app. Her story "Small and Heavy World" was a finalist for both Best American Short Stories and a Pushcart Prize, and her story "Crocodile" won The Masters Review 2020 Flash Fiction Contest. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Pittsburgh, where she was the recipient of a teaching fellowship and Turow-Kinder Award. She currently resides in Austin, Texas.
Gail Shalan is a storyteller based in New York City. She has narrated books for Tantor, HighBridge, Blackstone, Chatterbox Audio with Audible UK, Spoken Realms, and more. She is also a narrator and producer on The StoryLight Podcast (available wherever you listen to podcasts). She holds an MFA in acting from the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and has worked in both the US and UK in theater, film, and voice-over. Gail is also a puppeteer and one half of the International folk duo The Strange Bedfellows.