Swamplandia and a Swampy, Muddy, Key Lime Tart

The heroine of Karen Russel's Swamplandia  - Ava Bigtree - is the most unique, remarkable and heartbreaking character I have encountered in a long time.  Swamplandia is Russell's first novel and in it she creates a vivid and strange world that seems to some extent not of this world, but of course it could very likely exist in Florida, a place I associate with weirdness.  The Big Tree family (who, btw, are not actually Native American despite the name), run a gator park and show in the Everglades.  It is, obviously, a quirky family - there is Ava, the youngest, her older sister Ossie who communicates with ghost, her rebellious brother Kiwi who is tired of island life, her father "Chief Bigtree" who runs the place, her grandfather who started the park, and the star of the show, her mother Hilola Bigtree, a champion gator wrestler.  The book documents the disintegration of the family and park after Ava's mother dies.  Much of the book centers around a perilous journey through the everglades/keys that Ava takes in small boat, and the real sense you got from both her journey and the description of the island that the family lives on is that it is a muddy, swampy, dense and wild place.  I knew since it takes place in Florida I needed to do something with key limes, so I decided on a muddy key lime tart - made with an Oreo crust and swirled with melted chocolate.  I purposefully made the chocolate swirls messy because Swamplandia is messy!

As soon as you are through with the first paragraph of Karen Russell's Swamplandia! you know this book is different and unique.  This is Russell's first novel and the imagination she exhibits in it is impressive.  But even though the story and setting are somewhat outlandish, the characters are both quirky and real - and the family conflicts and love between them is genuine and recognizable.  Shortly after the book begins, Ava's mother dies and Swamplandia! begins to fall on hard times.  Without the star attraction - the expert female gator wrestler - the visitors of the park dwindle to one or two a week.  Chief Bigtree is distracted by his grief over his wife's death and basically leaves his kids to fend for themselves. First by ignoring them when he is around and then for real when he leaves the island and goes to the mainland in an effort to make money.  This is when things get even worse.  First, Kiwi leaves the island in an act of rebellion and an effort to make some money to feed his sisters.  He finds a job at The World of Darkness, a theme park on the mainland that is largely responsible for putting Swamplandia out of business.  The World of Darkness is a bizarre place which Russell satirically depicts as a place that contains everything bad you can think of in a theme park.  The novel toggles between what is going in Kiwi's world (written in 3rd person) and Ava's story, which is written in first person.  After Kiwi leaves Swamplandia, Ava's older sister Ossie disappears, allegedly with her boyfriend, who is the ghost of a dredge man who died 100 years ago.  I do wish that Russell had also given us a glimpse of Ossie's world and story, we never really understand where she was when Ava was looking for her and why she fell in love with a ghost.  Ava embarks on a search for her sister with a sinister character called the Birdman - he is a drifter who mysteriously showed up on the Bigtree's island in a canoe and accompanies Ava on her journey.  For a while, a could not figure out whether Birdman was simply just weird but a good guy or something darker and badder.  I will let you figure it out on your own, but it becomes clear quickly.  The description of Ava's journey with the Birdman is eerie and frightening.  We really don't know whether Ava will come out of this OK and whether Ossie will be found alive or dead.  The surrounding wildlife and vegetation is as menacing as the Birdman.   Ava's narration is so wise that it does not sound like the voice of a 13 year old.  But her actions, which are filled with inexperience and naivete, confirm her real age, with heartbreaking results.   The book, which starts as quirky funny lark descends into a tragic story about loss.  It really moved me and was a unique combination of imagination and emotion.

Muddy Key Lime Tart
Adapted from Martha Stewart's Baking (for filling)
Ingredients
(Crust)
About 20 Oreo-type cookies
5 tablespoons melted butter

(Filling)
4 large egg yolks
1 can sweetened condensed milk (a magic ingredient, makes everything good!)
2 teaspoons grated lime zest (if you have key limes, by all means use them)
1/2 cup key lime juice (I used the bottled kind I recently got at an airport in Florida!, you can use fresh key lime or lime juice as well)
pinch of salt

(Swirl)
Semisweet chocolate, about 1/2 cup of chips
2-4 tablespoons of heavy cream

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350.
2. Put the cookies in a food processor and grind up until you have cookie crumbs.
3. In a bowl, mix the cookie crumbs and the melted butter until all the crumbs are moist.
4. Pour the crumb mixture into a tart pan and press for full coverage.  Use a measuring cup on the edges to get crumb coverage up the sides of the tart pan (9 inch).
5. Bake until firm about 10 minutes.  
6. Remove and let cool on a rack. Leave oven on.
7. While that is cooling, to make filling, beat the egg yolks until pale and fluffy.  You could do this with a mixer, it would take a couple of minutes. I did it by hand and it took about 8 minutes.
8. Add the condensed milk, lime zest, lime juice and salt and beat to combine.
9. Pour filling into cooled crust and bake until set, about 10 minutes.
10. Melt the chocolate and heavy cream together in a double boiler or bowl over simmering water.  If you want the tart messy, just plop it on the tart as I did.  Or, you can try to be neat, pipe circles of chocolate ganache on the tart, then run a toothpick through it to create a spiderweb effect.
11. Alternatively, if you want to skip the chocolate, just serve with dollops of whipped cream