Swamplandia! by Karen Russell

Karen Russell's fantastic, darkly imaginative debut novel Swamplandia! is set in the swamps of Florida, far from Wheeling. Surprisingly enough, though, Russell's Bigtree family has Ohio Valley roots. Grandpa Bigtree, "the white son of a white coal miner in Ohio", left for the Florida wilderness, only to find "the farmland he'd bought, sight unseen, at the Bowles and Beaver Co. Land Lottery in Martins Ferry, Ohio turned out to be covered by six feet of crystal water."