Where the Crawdad Sings by Delia Owens

the Cover

For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet fishing village. Kya Clark is barefoot and wild; unfit for polite society. So in late 1969, when the popular Chase Andrews is found dead, locals immediately suspect her.

But Kya is not what they say. A born naturalist with just one day of school, she takes life's lessons from the land, learning the real ways of the world from the dishonest signals of fireflies. But while she has the skills to live in solitude forever, the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. Drawn to two young men from town, who are each intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new and startling world–until the unthinkable happens.

In Where the Crawdads Sing, Owens juxtaposes an exquisite ode to the natural world against a profound coming of age story and haunting mystery. Thought-provoking, wise, and deeply moving, Owens’s debut novel reminds us that we are forever shaped by the child within us, while also subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.

The story asks how isolation influences the behavior of a young woman, who like all of us, has the genetic propensity to belong to a group. The clues to the mystery are brushed into the lush habitat and natural histories of its wild creatures.

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Title: Where the Crawdad Sings

Author: Delia Owens

Published date: 14 Aug 2018

Genre: Suspense

Saw the book reviewed and recommended by many persons. I have no single complaint about this book, it is just perfect. But why is it perfect?

Let's start with the story, there is a family live in a foreign area, somewhere between the marsh. There is a lot of rumors about the untouched territory, the marsh, and the persons living there. Kya is the youngest child in the family. One day, her mother took off, leaving the family behind, soon the others join, the oldest siblings, leaving Kya with her abusive father.

Kya, a pre-schooler, struggling to learn how to feed herself whilst waiting for her mother to return. Nature is her mother, the marsh is her father and the beach is her companion.

She basically lives alone, her father only comes after several days fishing in the sea. Leaving her small money to survive. Kya didn't even know how to count, and illiterate. Barefoot, she came to the town only to be chased out and judged by the town society.

Slowly, Kya learned to survive and earn money. There is a good boy in the neighborhood the only person that actually contacts Kya among the years. Not long, her father also left. Kya, illiterate and alone try to survive into the livelihood.

Thru the good boy, Tate, Kya transforms into a smart woman with a lot of knowledge and experience. Not kind of smart from formal education, but she smart because experienced it firsthand.  Her instinct is so developed that reading a book is only a complementary answer. Illiterate Kya turns into an artist and a biologist (by experience). 

The story has a forward and backward plot in every different chapter. At the present, Kya is an adult woman, twenty-something years old and accused of the murder of the town's golden boy, Chase Andrews. 

The past story weighing about how a human can barely survive without another human being's contact. Isolated may bring solitude, but one cannot forget the own nature of humans, desperate for another person's attention. The stong Kya, alone in the marsh for years and when she saw the opportunity to have a close relationship with other persons, she will crawl towards it. She wants to have a friend, a human friend not only the birds on the beach.

The present story is about how we, as a society, judged a different person than us. Are we part of those who indirectly contribute to isolating a 'strange' person? or we are part of those who offer the hands? and give her a chance? 

Besides the strong theme, the dictions are marvelously beautiful, almost poetic. And of course the immerse knowledge about birds kingdom, and nature (marsh). It is very easy to expect that the author is a researcher or experience in nature writing. Though yes, the dialogues are not fully developed, the characterizations are far from perfect, but this is her first fiction novel, so it is acceptable. 

I feel that, since the author is experienced in nature writing, she can speak better thru nature and animals. There is one example :

Then, following the bailiff, she walked with Jodie toward the back door of the courtroom and, as she passed the windowsill, reached out and touched Sunday Justice's tail. He ignored her, and she admired his perfected pretense of not needing goodbye. p-348

You can't get hurt when you love someone from the other side of an estuary. All the years she rejected him, she survived because he was somewhere in the marsh, waiting. But now perhaps he would be no longer be here. P-354.

Well, I enjoyed almost everything about this book, ignoring the undeveloped dialogue but so much enjoying the detailed description about nature and animals. I like the plot twist very much. No wonder readers gave a high rating for this book!