On its surface, this is a novel about an alligator, a snake, a mangy hound dog, and a couple of cats. But look underneath and there’s something much deeper in Kathi Appelt’s first novel, set in Louisiana bayou country. Appelt’s lyrical story weaves two narrative strands. One, set in the present day, involves Ranger, an old hound who has been chained for ages to the side of a ramshackle house by his owner, Gar Face. Ranger’s baying has attracted a lonely calico cat that joins him in The Underneath, the small space beneath the front porch that affords them protection from Gar Face’s cruelty. The cat, her two kittens, and Ranger become a family. The second strand tells how an ancient snake came to be trapped in a jar beneath a centuries-old tree in the bayou. Going back a thousand years, it reveals Grandmother Moccasin’s sense of betrayal and desire for revenge after her daughter, Night Song, grew up and left her, choosing to transform into a human woman when she fell in love with a man. In short chapters that move back in forth in time and between various points of view, the two narratives are tied together by a strong sense of place and by the creatures who live there, including the Alligator King who lies in wait beneath the water. Appelt’s prose is exquisite and begs to be read aloud. But this is not a sweet bedtime story for small children. Although it is beautifully written and features cute, furry critters, it is ultimately a novel that wells up from the murky depths of muddy backwaters where one is either predator or prey, and where love and redemption are sometimes fleeting, slippery like a snake’s shimmering skin, and ultimately transformative. (Ages 9–14)

There is nothing lonelier than a cat who has been loved, at least for a while, and then abandoned on the side of the road.

A calico cat, about to have kittens, hears the lonely howl of a chained-up hound deep in the backwaters of the bayou. She dares to find him in the forest, and the hound dares to befriend this cat, this feline, this creature he is supposed to hate. They are an unlikely pair, about to become an unlikely family. Ranger urges the cat to hide underneath the porch, to raise her kittens there because Gar-Face, the man living inside the house, will surely use them as alligator bait should he find them. But they are safe in the Underneath...as long as they stay in the Underneath.

Kittens, however, are notoriously curious creatures. And one kitten's one moment of curiosity sets off a chain of events that is astonishing, remarkable, and enormous in its meaning. For everyone who loves Sounder, Shiloh, and The Yearling, for everyone who loves the haunting beauty of writers such as Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Flannery O'Connor, and Carson McCullers, Kathi Appelt spins a harrowing yet keenly sweet tale about the power of love -- and its opposite, hate -- the fragility of happiness and the importance of making good on your promises.