... an immersive work as shimmering with details as it is with mystery ... Deliciously descriptive, Pedersen does not skimp on details in this book ... The novel’s imagery is so striking that it’s easy to fall inside of the details and drink them up, until one becomes a third party floating among the June bugs ... The characters are this story’s shining attraction. All of them are so complex, and their voices so strong, that the piece feels less like a book and more like a memory. Each character is complete on their own, and watching them find their own voices and work through their traumas is extremely cathartic. This extends, especially, to Sunshine. She’s allowed to be a kid, yet her own traumas and issues are not downplayed. All the while, she’s bearing the full brunt of her family’s baggage, too ... the characters themselves bring light, love, and happiness to one another, and to readers. Though there is pain, there is equal parts joy and humanity. Overall, The Crocodile Bride is a very human and intricately constructed novel that should be on bookshelves for years to come.
Nothing happens in Fingertip. Yet as the novel progresses, everything depends on this humid backwater rich with stories and secrets ... In addition to the novel's literal and figurative meanings, Pedersen adds these historical, ecological and mythological elements. I thought of William Faulkner's southern landscapes, his mythmaking, and of Maine writer Sarah Orne Jewett's wonderful nature story A White Heron with its brave, if naïve, heroine ... Finally, in a novel so rich, so evocative of a place and its people, readers might need to pause occasionally to sort out who is who. I suspect some readers will be put off by the references to bodily functions ... This said, The Crocodile Bride marks an impressive first novel filled with hope, understanding and, ultimately, a tempered forgiveness for the secret things that have happened here.
Pedersen skillfully shifts between these tessellating pieces of family history and unfurls unsettling patterns ... Pedersen does well to temper the accumulative dread with the care and camaraderie of Sunshine’s nearby relatives ... Further generations are described compellingly, and Pedersen slots each into the novel’s familiar mold ... a wonderfully evoked place of rot and ruin ... The brackish setting allows for anger, fear, love and despair to all be felt as one. And the author delicately handles the messy union between human culpability and generational damage. That insatiable crocodile might be made of human cruelty, or abject loneliness, redundancies and foreclosures — or a muddy mess of it all.
... a bayou fairytale swirling with evil 'haint' spirits and the ghosts of those who have borne similar trials. Moods transform into weather, and the confusion of adolescence is pressed against the legacy of generational abuse in this pensive story of endurance and survival ... In Sunshine’s character, Pedersen has encapsulated the taut emotions of a rudderless child spinning about, aimlessly searching for guidance. Sunshine’s confusion, her desire to belong, her innate need for security and safety that just don’t exist in her world create lasting images that are hauntingly relatable and profoundly sad ... Pedersen’s depiction of Sunshine’s adolescent angst is fraught with tension and rich with compassion ... Emotionally wrought yet infused with a tender and accessible depiction of adolescent struggle, Crocodile Bride examines the ways victims of domestic violence mentally survive their realities and the mechanisms of perseverance passed through the generations.
... captivating ... Told with vision and compassion, The Crocodile Bride is a novel about a strong-minded, resourceful girl who breaks from her dark family history and hopes to live out a better story herself.
... more than just a tale to tell children about an avaricious eater who is transformed by a woman. It is an allegory that suggests that a woman’s responsibility is to heal violent men. In her debut, readers find three generations of women who are subjected to the cruelty and anger of men and who find ways to endure, restore, and hold their families together despite this antagonism ... As slow-moving as the waters of the Black Bayou the story is set in, these women endure and explore the repetitive nature of abuse and utilize myths as an escape from violence. Though the past leaves its marks and spider webs in the mind and on the body, the women of The Crocodile Bride attempt to break away, fleeing however they can. It is a tale too often chocked down to domestic difficulties. Here, Pedersen brings it to life—so that it’s not merely a tale told to children who may not entirely grasp its warning. The croc may lie in swamps, but it also lives in the very houses nestled nearby, waiting for a woman in a white dress to take the plunge into its stomach.
... a gripping family saga about the power of storytelling — especially its ability to warm and soften the edges of cold, harsh reality. Pedersen creates a world at once tragic and beautiful, violent and magical, desperately impoverished yet rich in meaning ... Throughout the narrative, Pedersen allows Sunshine’s aunt and grandmother to tell their own stories of domestic abuse, lost dreams and the price they paid by remaining silent. Sunshine, burdened by her own fears and secrets, follows their example at first. Then late one night when the darkness threatens to engulf her, she runs out into the swamp in search of help, setting in motion events that will change her family forever.
Pedersen’s expert character development and winding plot are aided by short, clipped chapters that bounce back and forth in time, showing the differing perspectives of women in Sunshine’s family. Pedersen skillfully crafts a slow burn of a novel that eventually opens up to expose generations of family secrets, and more importantly, the value of unearthing truth.
... stunning ... Readers of Southern writers such as Dorothy Allison or Kaye Gibbons may find the plot predictable but nonetheless enticing, with suspenseful moments of unforeseeable consequences ... Fans of fiction about Southern women or about the formative years of girlhood will love this quick, captivating read that tugs at the heartstrings.
