This was a chapter book length folk/fairy tale. Gnat Stokes is a genuinely-presented Appalachian girl who lives an adventure in a town setting that is almost as unfamiliar to most readers as Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry mainly because of its historical, rural post-Civil-War setting. I really liked this book. The vernacular is a bit tough to grapple with at times, but it enriches the story on the whole. Gnat tells the story, so it's first person and she is as wild and as scrappy as they come. ( )

In Mary's Cove, Tennessee, in 1869, twelve-year-old Gnat Stokes decides to prove she's not just a trouble maker by rescuing a boy who was spirited away seven years earlier by the evil Swamp Queen of Foggy Bottom.