Sweetgirl
Travis Mulhauser, 2016
Ecco/HarperCollins
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062400833
Summary
With the heart, daring, and evocative atmosphere of Winter’s Bone and True Grit, and driven by the raw, whip-smart voice of Percy James, a blistering debut about a fearless sixteen-year old girl whose search for her missing mother leads to an unexpected discovery, and a life or death struggle in the harsh frozen landscape of the Upper Midwest.
As a blizzard bears down, Percy James sets off to find her troubled mother, Carletta. For years, Percy has had to take care of herself and Mama—a woman who’s been unraveling for as long as her daughter can remember. Fearing Carletta is strung out on meth and that she won’t survive the storm, Percy heads for Shelton Potter’s cabin, deep in the woods of Northern Michigan. A two-bit criminal, as incompetent as he his violent, Shelton has been smoking his own cook and grieving the death of his beloved Labrador, Old Bo.
But when Percy arrives, there is no sign of Carletta. Searching the house, she finds Shelton and his girlfriend drugged into oblivion—and a crying baby girl left alone in a freezing room upstairs. From the moment the baby wraps a tiny hand around her finger, Percy knows she must save her—a split-second decision that is the beginning of a dangerous odyssey in which she must battle the elements and evade Shelton and a small band of desperate criminals, hell-bent on getting that baby back.
Knowing she and the child cannot make it alone, Percy seeks help from Carletta’s ex, Portis Dale, who is the closest thing she’s ever had to a father. As the storm breaks and violence erupts, Percy will be forced to confront the haunting nature of her mother’s affliction and finds her own fate tied more and more inextricably to the baby she is determined to save.
Filled with the sweeping sense of cultural and geographic isolation of its setting—the hills of fictional Cutler County in northern Michigan—and told in Percy’s unflinching style, Sweetgirl is an affecting exploration of courage, sacrifice, and the ties that bind—a taut and darkly humorous tour-de-force that is horrifying, tender, and hopeful. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 23, 1976
• Where—Northern Michigan
• Education—B.A., North Central Michigan College and Central Michigan Univerity; M.F.A., University of
North Carolina, Greensboro
• Currently—lives in Durham, North Carolina
Travis Mulhauser was born and raised in Northern Michigan. His novel, Sweetgirl, was long-listed for The Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, was a Michigan Notable Book Award winner in 2017, an Indie Next Pick, and named one of Ploughshares Best Books of the New Year.
He is also the author of Greetings from Cutler County: A Novella and Stories, published in 2005.
Travis received his MFA in Fiction from UNC-Greensboro and is also a proud graduate of North Central Michigan College and Central Michigan University. He lives currently in Durham, North Carolina, with his wife and two children (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
[L]ean yet poetic prose.
Popmatters.com
The writing is gorgeous and the stakes rise steadily from the moment Percy first sets out, making this slim novel surprisingly vicious and taut.
Bookriot.com
Sweetgirl works on so many levels, it’s difficult to know how to classify it…hilarious, heartbreaking and true, a major accomplishment from an author who looks certain to have an impressive career ahead of him.
NPR
[Y]ou can’t help but smile at this disarmingly original novel.… Travis Mulhauser traverses a wobbling slack line across a moral crevasse that few of us will experience. Yet there’s a devastating credibility to the events he creates.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
So good that I read a few paragraphs aloud to my podiatrist…. Though meth and drugs infest almost every page, this debut novel is chillingly lyrical and filled with a love so raw and fierce it takes your breath.
Charlotte Observer
[S]mart, taut, and believable writing.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Mulhauser evocatively describes the bleak landscape and starkly degraded social mores of an isolated community after the tourists have departed..… Yet the novel succeeds as a coming-of-age story when Percy, having survived grisly violence and abysmal loss, experiences a realization about how to shape her future.
Publishers Weekly
A self-sufficient 16-year-old girl searches for her meth-addicted parent in the deep woods…. Verdict: Though it never fully escapes the shadow of Woodrell's famous novel [Winter's Bone], this title boasts fine writing and memorable characters. —Michael Pucci, South Orange P.L., NJ
Library Journal
Percy, certainly, is an established type. She's wise beyond her years, committed to doing the right thing despite.…the hardships she has endured. And, like every other character in this novel, she speaks with a folksy eloquence that requires strenuous suspension of disbelief.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. How did you feel about the book’s title, Sweetgirl, before and after finishing the novel?
2. Much of the novel is told from the perspective of Percy, a teenage girl. How does her relatively young point of view affect what we learn about her surroundings? Did you find her voice convincing?
How would you describe Percy and Portis’s relationship, and how does it change over the course of the novel?
3. How did getting the third-person perspective of Shelton affect the way you thought about him as a character? What did reading Shelton’s perspective do to humanize him for you?
4. The stark landscape and the blizzard become a driving force throughout the course of the novel. In what ways do the characters’ geographical surroundings inform and shape their choices?
5. The book begins with Percy searching for Carletta—yet when she finds her, she decides to leave her in the trailer in order to keep seeking help for Jenna. What do you think her reasoning was? Would you have done the same?
6. There are many instances of violence throughout the course of the novel. What did these passages tell you about life in this community? Did you feel that they were necessary to the plot, and why or why not?
7. How did you feel about Percy’s change of heart by the end of the novel, and her decision to leave? Do you think Percy would have left had Portis still been around?
(Questions from the author's website.)