Under the Heron’s Light

Gr 8 Up–Three hundred years ago, Babylou Mac and her siblings escaped into North Carolina’s Great Dismal Swamp after Babylou killed their mother’s murderer. There, they lived on the Isle of Floriate, an enchanted place where the natural world protects those whom she deems worthy, but not without a price. In the present day, Atlas and her three cousins Mika, Jacob, and Pansy prepare to celebrate Bornday—the combined birthday tradition for the cousins and their beloved family matriarch, Grannylou. This Bornday celebration promises change early on, when Grannylou allows Atlas a first sip of Dismal Tea, a powerful potion that gives Atlas the ability to perceive ghostly spirits. Always content to believe she was Grannylou’s favorite, Atlas is startled when Pansy is revealed to have had her own unsettling experience with the Swamp, which seems to be beckoning Grannylou back into its “thumb-thick thicket[s]” for reasons the cousins struggle to understand. But they would follow Grannylou to the ends of the Earth, though the swamp is filled with magic and intense emotions, and something there demands a reckoning. The Great Dismal Swamp is a very real place with a harrowing history worth exploring. The lyrical and ethereal writing alongside the warmth of the dialect, a creative concept extremely well executed, and characters readers can’t help but care about combine with painfully authentic emotions for a one-sitting read.