"The Girls in the Stilt House" is a beautiful story about perserverance, survival, and family. Despite their greatest efforts to leave the Trace, Matilda and Ada find themselves as roommates. Matilda is a sharecropper's daughter who has lost her father, mother, and baby sister at the hands of a conniving alcoholic. Ada is a motherless girl carrying the baby of a man she ran away with a year prior, a man who sent her back to her cruel father after professing his heart belonged to another woman.

A series of unfortunate events brought Matilda into Ada's home. Over the course of a year, the girls worked to maintain the household and care for Ada's newborn daughter, Annis. When Matilda peices together the murderous acts of the farmer's nephew, Frank, she continues her run from the Trace, deserting Ada and Annis.

After Matilda's departure and the sinking of Ada's childhood stilt house, Ada and Annis result to living in Frank's housekeepers quarters. When Frank sells his deceased uncle's estate, he ventures into Jackson to sign a lease for his new law firm and secures a deposit for an apartment for Ada and Annis. When Matilda is unexpectedly sighted in a Jackson theater, Frank goes on a rampage to have her arrested and hung. It is up to Ada to save them both.