Diksha Sundriyal
A shocking truth unravels the life of a young girl in ‘The Marsh King’s Daughter,’ when she discovers that she has been living a lie her whole life. Helena Holbrook held her father in high regard. He taught her how to hunt and survive in the wilderness, and she was dedicated to making him proud. But one day, her mother takes her away from her beloved father and their home in the marsh. What she discovers out there makes her reconsider everything she thought she knew about her father. It is heartbreaking to witness Helena grapple with the truth. What might pinch your heart further is the discovery that Helena and her pain are not entirely made up.
Jaycee Lee Dugald’s Case Led Karen Dionne to Helena’s Story
In 1991, an eleven-year-old Jaycee Lee Dugard was kidnapped by Phillip Garrido and held captive until 2009. During this time, Dugard gave birth to two daughters while she spent her years hidden away from the world in Garrido’s backyard. In 2009, Dugard’s daughters were fifteen and eleven, visiting the University of California campus with Garrido. They’d come there for an event permit, and the events manager grew suspicious of Garrido. A background check on Garrido revealed his criminal past, and what ticked off the whole thing was the revelation from his parole officer that he didn’t have any daughters. A convicted sexual offender with two young girls was not a good thing, and Garrido was soon asked to report to the station. With no way to explain away the scenario, Garrido eventually accepted the truth about kidnapping and raping Dugard for all these years.
Author Karen Dionne had heard of the case, and she revealed her fascination with the people who didn’t have an ideal childhood but didn’t let the things of the past affect their future and turned their lives into something good, as opposed to the environment they’d been raised in. Dugard and her daughters’ story struck a chord with Dionne, and she decided to explore this story from the daughters’ point of view.
Another thing that made her focus on the daughter’s perspective was Hans Christian Anderson’s ‘The Marsh King’ story, in which the girl is the daughter of a beautiful princess and the evil Marsh King. The girl has both the beauty and grace of her mother as well as the wickedness and vileness of her father. The balance of this duality and the allure of her dark side forms the crux of the story. With Helena, Dionne wanted to explore this tug-of-war within the daughter, who suddenly has to deal with the fact that the father she loved and revered is evil.
For the premise, Dionne looked toward Dugard’s case, but when creating the characters, she decided to create fictional ones rather than focus on Dugard’s daughters and their journey. It allowed her room to experiment with Helena Holbrook’s story while keeping her roots fixed in reality.
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