Michigan mystery author Karen Dionne will be visiting Schuler Books & Music Thursday, June 15 for a 7 p.m. presentation.
The Detroit-based author will be discussing her latest thriller “The Marsh King’s Daughter.” The story centers around Helena Pelletier, who seems to have the life she deserves. A loving husband, two beautiful daughters, a business that fills her days. Then she catches an emergency news announcement and realizes she was a fool to think she could ever leave her worst days behind her.
Helena 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. No electricity, no heat, no running water, not a single human beyond the three of them. Helena, born two years after the abduction, loved her home in the nature – fishing, tracking, hunting. And despite her father’s odd temperament and sometimes brutal behavior, she loved him, too…until she learn precisely how savage a person he could be.
More than 20 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 marshland he knows better than anyone else in the world. The police commence a manhunt, but Helena knows they don’t stand a chance. She knows that only one person has the skills to find the survivalist the world calls the Marsh King – because only one person has ever been trained by him: his daughter.
“Almost our entire staff has been wowed by the newest book by Michigan author Karen Dionne,” said Whitney Spotts, from Schuler Books and Music. The book has received praise from Lee Child and Karin Slaughter, and is a good selection for those who enjoyed “The Girl on the Train” and “The Widow.” “The Marsh King’s Daughter” has been called both a mesmerizing psychological suspense and a love letter to the Upper Peninsula, told through the story of a woman who must risk everything to hunt down the dangerous man who shaped her past and threatens to steal her future.
Dionne is the co-founder of the online writers community Backspace, the organizer of the Salt Cay Writers Retreat, and a member of the International Thriller Writers, where she served on the board of directors. She has been honored by the Michigan Humanities Council as a Humanities Scholar.
Schuler Books & Music is located at 2660 28th St. SE.
