The Girls in the Stilt House

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussions of racism, gender discrimination, harassment, child abuse, pregnancy loss, animal cruelty and death, cursing, illness and death, and emotional abuse.

It’s close to midnight, and Ada and Matilda climb down from the wagon in a remote stretch of Natchez Trace. Something bad has happened. Matilda points out two Confederate tombs—brick and limestone boxes above ground—and she slides the top slab of one several inches. Matilda and Ava return to the wagon for their tools and the body they intend to hide here.

It is the spring of 1923, prior to the night depicted by the novel’s prologue. Ada can smell the fetid swamp before she can see it, and she remembers her mother’s death when Ada was nine. Now, Ada is 16 and returning to her father’s house after spending a year in Baton Rouge with a man she ran off with a year earlier. When she sees the dismal swamp, she is reminded of apparitions and of her fear and dread. Ada’s father is not home, and when she enters the house, she sees the squalor he’s created in her absence, reminded of all her mother “endured” during her life. As she awaits his return, she cleans the house and eventually goes to sleep, knowing she’ll wake when she hears him.