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Two sisters sharing an adventure on a humid Florida night are among the characters featured in Karen Russell's collection of short stories.
   
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Ava Wrestles the Alligator

Karen Russell (Knopf)

My sister and I are staying in Grandpa Sawtooth's old house until our father, Chief Bigtree, gets back from the Mainland. It's our first summer alone in the swamp. "You girls will be fine," the Chief slurred.

  

"Feed the gators, don't talk to strangers. Lock the door at night." The Chief must have forgotten that it's a screen door at Grandpa's -- there is no key, no lock. The old house is a rust-checkered yellow bungalow at the edge of the wild bird estuary. It has a single, airless room; three crude, palmetto windows, with mosquito-blackened sills; a tin roof that hums with the memory of rain. I love it here.

 

Why do Boogiemen prefer the dark?

Whenever the wind gusts in off the river, the sky rains leaves and feathers. During mating season, the bedroom window rattles with the ardor of birds.

 

Now the thunder makes the thin window glass ripple like wax paper. Summer rain is still the most comforting sound that I know. I like to pretend that it's our dead mother's fingers, drumming on the ceiling above us. In the distance, an alligator bellows -- not one of ours, I frown, a free agent. Our gators are hatched in incubators. If they make any noise at all, it's a perfunctory grunt, bored and sated. 

 

This wild gator has an inimitable cry, much louder, much closer. I smile and pull the blankets around my chin. If Osceola hears it, she's not letting on. My sister is lying on the cot opposite me. Her eyes are wide open, and she is smiling and smiling in the dark. More

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(Sharron Ward, Katalyst Productions), reported by Jackie Long

• KAREN RUSSELL published ten colorful stories in her first book. In one, the main character's father is a Minotaur, and the family goes west by wagon train. One character lives on a swampy, backwater alligator farm. (She is from Florida).