K. Z. Richards

The Girls in the Stilt House is a moving and harrowing story about two teenage girls whose lives are brought together by a murder in 1920s Mississippi. The story is told in three parts and alternates between the two girls’ perspectives. Part I follows Ada, a submissive and timid young girl just returning to her simple home in the Trace after she ran away a year before, and part II follows Matilda, a sharecropper’s daughter hardened by a life of poverty, loss, and injustice. In part III, the two girls develop a distant and unlikely friendship as their shared and unshared secrets threaten to destroy any hope of finding refuge.

Mustian’s debut novel is a masterpiece. Her characters provoke every emotion I hope a books stirs in me—compassion, anger, fear, hope, and empathy—and the realistic and thoroughly researched backdrop of the Trace in the 1920s and its messy history gives the story weight and realism. Every character, whether a heroine or villain or somewhere in between, shows depth and clear motive, and even though I thought the plot moved slowly at times, the characters kept me interested and invested. Readers who enjoyed Where the Crawdads Sing will love this book, but I would also recommend it to anyone who appreciates a story about rising from your deepest low.