Under the Herons Light, Randi Pink
Under the Herons Light, Randi Pink
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

Under the Heron's Light

Author: Randi Pink

Narrator: Ozzie Jacobs

Unabridged: 11 hr 45 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 11/12/2024


Synopsis

On a damp night in 1722, Babylou Mac and her three siblings witness the murder of their mother at the hands of the preacher's son—so Babylou kills him. With plantation dogs on their heels, the siblings breach the treacherous confines of the Great Dismal Swamp. Deeper and deeper into Dismal they delve, toward a refuge where they can live freely within the swamp's natural—and supernatural—protection.

Three-hundred years later, college student Atlas comes home to North Carolina for the annual Bornday cookout and hog roast: a celebration of the fact that she and her three cousins were all born on the same day nineteen years ago, sharing a birthday with their Grannylou. But this Bornday, Grannylou's usual riddles and folktales about a marvelous paradise deep in the Great Dismal Swamp start to take on a tangible quality.

When Dismal calls, sucking Grannylou in, it's up to Atlas and her cousins to uncover the history that the black waters hold. Centuries of family tension are about to be dug up. Because Babylou and Grannylou are one and the same, and the power she helped cultivate hundreds of years ago—steeped in Black resistance, familial love, and the otherworldly mysteries of the Great Dismal Swamp—is bubbling back up. But so is a bitterness that runs deep as the swamp's waters. And some are ready to take what they feel they're owed.

About Randi Pink

Randi Pink grew up in the South and attended a mostly white high school. She lives with her husband and their two rescue dogs in Birmingham, Alabama, where she works for a branch of National Public Radio. Into White was her fiction debut.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Rudi on February 19, 2025

Magical realism is still a new-ish genre to me but man do I enjoy it. This is my second Randi Pink novel & it is another 5 star read. She is a natural storyteller. This dual POV novel celebrating the beauty of southern tradition while tackling important identity issues. The characters find their his......more

Goodreads review by Shannon on October 23, 2024

3.5* There is so much to like about Under the Heron's Light, so very much. Between the characters, both current and from the 1700s, as well as the historical and familial pieces that are woven together. I loved that this was based on true places and stories, and I loved how the past and present wove......more

Goodreads review by Tressa on October 28, 2024

UNDER THE HERON'S LIGHT is one of those unique stories that draws you in as it weaves itself around you. Steeped in a history full of hardship and wrongness while also being one of family, sacrifice and magic. The characters are full of life and compelling as they strive to find safety and power by......more

Goodreads review by Hannah on January 18, 2025

The Mac family gathers to celebrate Bornday with a cookout every year- the shared birthday of the four cousins, Atlas, Mika, Jason And Pansy, as well as the birthday of the family matriarch, Grannylou. Every Bornday, Grannylou tells stories of The Great Dismal Swamp, just yards from her front door;......more

Goodreads review by Alicia on December 10, 2024

Part of my struggle with reading the book as a HS librarian is the kind of kid that I could give this to because it's an intricately woven story with time periods in the past (1700s) and the present), a thickly entrenched setting in the Great Dismal Swamp, magic, and meaning that it reads like an ad......more