Lightning apparently strikes at night for Karen Dionne.

The Detroit-area author said she woke up one morning with the first four sentences of a story that grew into her latest novel, The Marsh King’s Daughter. Released Tuesday, the book has gained praise from writers such as Lee Child, Karen Slaughter, Megan Abbott, and Sara Gruen and featured in the New York Times’ list of promising summer thrillers.

“I feel like I’m wearing a permanent smile,” said Dionne, who will give a reading at 7 p.m. today at Aunt Agatha’s, 213 S. Fourth Ave., Ann Arbor.

As the co-founder of an online writers group, “I have seen hundreds of authors get published,” she said. “I also know how rare it is for something like this. It’s like being struck by lightning.”

The Marsh King’s Daughter centers on Helena Pelletier, who spends the first 12 years of her life completely off the grid in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula with her mother and father. Dionne parallels Helena’s story with the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale by the same name. Helena learns to hunt, trap, and forage from her father. From her mother, Helena begrudgingly learns domestic skills.

Though Helena is aware of her father’s cruel streak, she spends her childhood not knowing that he abducted her mother when her mother was a teenager, and they  are living under his complete control.

She and her mother eventually escape, and her father is sent to prison. Helena reinvents herself, marries, and has children of her own, but still she can’t escape the complicated bond that she shares with her father.

When he escapes from prison, Helena sets out to find father, using the skills that he taught her.

“Growing up, [Helena] didn’t know what a normal family was,” Dionne said. “She still doesn’t know what a normal family is. She doesn’t really appreciate what she’s got until she stands to lose it — and that’s a common thing for all of us.”

She said she hopes her, characters, particularly Helena, are sympathetic.

“When she leaves the marsh, she feels like a fool,” Dionne said. “By the end, she comes to terms with it.”

Dionne also expresses understanding for Helena’s mother and father.

Helena’s father “is a very damaged individual and probably didn't have the best upbringing himself,” Dionne said.

As for Helena’s mother, “I could have made her a stronger character, but in the end, I wanted a stark contrast between mother and father.”

The Marsh King’s Daughter is being published in 20 countries.

“At its heart, it’s a father-daughter story,” Dionne said. “That’s why it resonates in all these countries.”

In telling Helena’s story, Dionne draws from her own experiences living in a remote area of the Upper Peninsula. In what she said was an offshoot of the hippie movement, Dionne and her husband took their 6-week-old daughter and lived in a cabin they built in the wilderness.

Dionne said they “dabbled” in the type of lifestyle that Helena’s family encountered, building their own cabin and foraging for wild plants, but they didn't face anything quite as extreme as Helena’s family. Still, “I have had close encounters,” Dionne said.

But, she added, they were always able to return to civilization to pick up supplies.

As their children got older, she and her husband traded the remote U.P. for Detroit’s northern suburbs.

Dionne first signed with an agent in 1999, and has published two science novels (Freezing Point and Boiling Point) before writing The Marsh King’s Daughter. She said that even though her first novels were a modest success, her most recent novel has allowed her husband to retire.

Sometimes, she said, an author just needs to take a different approach to find success.

“Eighteen years to become an overnight success,” she said. “It’s definitely a long game, I’ve learned.

“If I’d have gotten discouraged,” she added, “I would never have known what was right around the corner.”

She said she’ll stick with writing mysteries in the future. In fact, she’ll appear in Sept. 10 at the Kerrytown Bookfest in Ann Arbor as part of the “Pager Turning Thrillers” panel.

As Dionne embarks on her book tour she is most looking forward to an appearance at McLean and Eakin in Petoskey, Mich. She and her husband reupholstered furniture for the bookstore.

“Instead of going in  the back door of the basement with the furniture, I get to go in the front door as an author,” she said.

Contact Shannon E. Kolkedy at:skolkedy@theblade.com.

First Published June 16, 2017, 4:00 a.m.