This cover of John Faherty’s 1958 novel Swamp Babe featuring a femme fatale in the world’s smallest rowboat was painted by James Meese, and is one you run across often on pulp websites. We included it in a collection of swamp and bayou women years ago, but never owned a copy of the book until recently. Published by Fawcett for its Crest line, it represents one of the more jarring re-titles you’ll run across—the book was originally published as Big Old Sun in 1941. We can imagine the discussion around that, and Faherty’s dismayed reaction.

Fawcett-Crest editor: We need to spice up that title for our re-issue, Robert. Big Old Sun doesn’t cut it.

Faherty: But Big Old Sun encapsulates the story’s theme of implacable, even hostile nature, and the ephermerality of human existence when viewed from—

Fawcett-Crest editor: We’re going with Swamp Babe.

Faherty: Swamp Babe? But… but… That’s terrible! Plus, the character Sylla—I assume that refers to her—is only one of several important—

Fawcett-Crest editor: Or we could go with Swamp Hussy.

Faherty: What?! Now hold on a second. She’s sort of a sensualist, true, but—

Fawcett-Crest editor: Or maybe even Shameless Swamp Pole Stroker. That actually has a nice ring.

Faherty: Okay. Okay. Swamp Babe. I… I like it. Let’s go with that.

And that’s how you handle writers, with their artsy notions and literary pretensions and such. The swamp babe of the story, Sylla Noble, lives on isolated Gumbo Limbo Island, south of the Florida mainland, seemingly south of the edge of the world. While she’s hooked up with a local cracker named Horace Mase, the man she really wants is Deaver Joulters, who hails from the Florida Keys and, as such, is a “conch.” The distinction between crackers and conchs looms large in the story, which means you’ll need to get accustomed to Faherty using those terms.

Sylla leverages her looks to obtain whatever she wishes, from cookies to free rides and on up the scale. The men she thinks exist only for manipulation are indeed pliable, but not as dumb as she thinks. They generally give her what she wants, while simultaneously harboring suspicions against her. She’s competing for Deaver with her older cousin Penny Ethidge, which is complicated because they live together in Penny’s house. Sylla wants out of Gumbo Limbo—badly. It’s understandable. It’s a place of oppressive heat, mosquitos by the swarm, and brutish men. But she’ll overplay her hand—that’s clear.

It’s never good when you’re tempted to put a book aside. In this case, not much seems to happen in the early stages. It isn’t until Sylla, Horace, Deaver, Penny, and her brother Captain Luke are on a gator hunting expedition in the deep swamp that the narrative takes on any momentum, and its muddy undercurrents become a bit clearer. Maybe Penny wants Deaver for herself, but she also wants to protect him. Horace is deceptively low key, but he’s possessive of Sylla, ambitious to the extent that his limited intellect will allow, and dangerous in pursuit of his goals. When violence erupts it will issue from him—that’s clear too.

Faherty was chasing after a literary novel here, an elevated socio-sexual examination of rural Florida folk, and while he can write well, the incredibly detailed character and environment descriptions can’t make up for the fact that not much happens—sexually, sociologically, or even structurally. Like the swamp babe of the cover art the narrative poles along at a crawl. It’s by design, but it’s a lot of patience to ask of readers. Faherty’s deep infusion of down south verisimilitude into Swamp Babe raises a question: Will readers progress beyond those sections? Most won’t, we feel. And we suspect most didn’t in 1941. But we managed it. For all the book’s flaws, Sylla and the rest will stick in our memories for a while.

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