If you were to write a novel set in a location you loved as a kid, where would it be? The scenery from our childhoods can strengthen us or haunt us. In Kelly Mustain’s The Girls in the Stilt House, most of the story takes place in the Natchez Trace area of Mississippi. Mustain grew up in Natchez, Mississippi, and the swampland around it is full of creatures and stories. There is beauty and danger in both. The story takes place during the tumultuous 1920s. The Natchez Trace is a character in the book all itself with it being the mother of the stilt house in the swamp. Ada, a young white girl lives in the stilt house owned by her drunk and abusive bootlegging father. He’s a horrible person! He’s the reason Matilda, a teenage African American girl who is the daughter of a black sharecropper finds Ada. Matilda’s father is a bootlegger too. Lucky for Ada and Matilda, they can help each other in different ways. The...