History Literature / Swamplandia

* IJustWantToBeLoved: Ossie's loneliness, isolation and grief drives her to search for love in the spirit world.

* AwesomeMccoolName: Ava's grandfather christened himself "Sawtooth Bigtree" around the time he founded the theme park, and her father followed suit with the names of her siblings, Kiwi and Osceola (the latter named for a historical Seminole leader).

* AwesomeMcCoolName: Ava's grandfather christened himself "Sawtooth Bigtree" around the time he founded the theme park, and her father followed suit with the names of her siblings, Kiwi and Osceola (the latter named for a historical Seminole leader).

--> ''...Mom was dead, so I thought the worst had already happened to us. I didn't realize that one tragedy can beget another, and another—bright-eyed disasters flooding out of a death hole like bats out of a cave.

* RealityEnsues: In the harshest way possible when [[spoiler: the Birdman is revealed as a rapist.]]

* InnocentInaccurate: Some of the more obviously MagicalRealism elements of the story are [[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane more or less]] influenced by Ava's naïveté.

* RescuedFromTheUnderworld: Ava attempts this for Ossie when she [[spoiler: runs away with her ghost fiancé.]]

* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane: Played heavily with regard to two plotlines: Ossie's relationships with ghosts and the Birdman's claim to know a route to the Underworld. [[spoiler:Although the latter is explained as a deception on the part of the Birdman, the former is left open to interpretation, although we are told that Ossie has been put on medication.]]

* PosthumousCharacter: Two for the price of one: Hilola Bigtree and Ossie's fiancé Louis Thanksgiving.

* InnocentInaccurate: Some of the more obviously MagicalRealism elements of the story are influenced to some degree by Ava's naïveté: see "Maybe Magic Maybe Mundane" below.

* KarmaHoudini: [[spoiler: The Bird Man.]]
* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane: Played heavily with regard to two plotlines: Ossie's relationships with ghosts and the Bird Man's claim to know a route to the Underworld. [[spoiler:Although the latter is explained as a deception on the part of the Bird Man, the former is left open to interpretation, although we are told that Ossie has been put on medication.]]

* StrangeGirl: It doesn't get much stranger than the eerily pale and [[PurpleEyes violet-eyed]] Ossie, who summons ghosts in an effort to find a boyfriend.

* StrangeGirl: Ossie.

In the novel, thirteen-year-old Ava Bigtree has lived her entire life at Swamplandia!, her family’s island home and gator-wrestling theme park in the Florida Everglades. But when illness fells Ava’s mother, the park’s indomitable headliner, the family is plunged into chaos; her father withdraws, her sister falls in love with a spooky character known as the Dredgeman, and her brilliant big brother, Kiwi, defects to a rival park called The World of Darkness.