Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

It’s definitely a new favorite of mine. Most definitely. Where the Crawdad’s Sing sits on my shelf of favorite books along with The Nightingale by Kristen Hannah. In a suspenseful novel, Delia Owens weaves together a powerful story about love, abandonment, the coming-of-age, and murder. It was a book that I couldn’t put down, and I found myself crying at the end of the story. 

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Kya has lived in the marsh her entire life, with her three siblings, mother, and abusive father. She has grown up playing in the swamps, collecting bird feathers and a variety of other wildlife. One day, when her abusive and drunk father’s temper spins out of control, her two eldest siblings leave the shack in the marsh in search of a better life. Not long after, Kya’s mother leaves the shack as well, leaving Kya and her older brother, Jodie, alone in the shack with an alcoholic father. Kya and Jodie patiently wait for their mother to return. Jodie and Kya wait for months, but they never see their mother walking down the path towards their shack. Jodie leaves the shack later, but he doesn’t bring Kya along with him because she is merely six years old at the time. This is the first moment in which Kya experiences one of the greatest losses of her time; her family abandoning her becomes the catalyst for her growing independence and reliance upon herself.  

Kya and her father get along for a decade. She grows up under the same roof as him, but she rarely sees him. Sometimes her father will go out for days on end without returning. Kya cooks for her erratic father, learns to grocery shop, while balancing her time out in the marsh. During this time, Kya attends school for exactly one day after social workers dragged her into the classroom. Unlike the other students in the classroom, Kya has never been in school before. When she misspells the word dog, as god and is made a joke of in the class, Kya vows never to set foot in a classroom again. At the age of 15, she has not the slightest inkling of how to read and she can only do simple arithmetic that gets her through the grocery store on a budget. During this time, Kya never loses her love for exploring the marsh and collecting things she finds. 

One day, Kya is hiding in the woods when she spots a boy. For weeks they do not meet each other in person, but they play what Kya calls “The Feather Game”. On a tree stump, they each leave things for the other person to collect in secret. Finally one day, the boy catches Kya collecting the feathers and goods he has left for her on the tree stump and they meet. The boy’s name is Tate, and he’s 18 years old. Tate is entranced by Kya’s wild beauty, and when he learns of her inability to read, he makes it his mission to teach her. They bond through these reading lessons and their mutual enjoyment for exploring the marsh and collecting things from nature. Tate and Kya fall heads first into love, and when Tate has to leave for college, he promises to return. But he never does. During the same time, Kya’s father leaves her, and within a couple of months, Kya finds herself having been abandoned again by the people she loves. It is after being left by Tate that Kya discovers the only person she can rely on is herself. Through this independence and her aloofness from town, people begin to dote Kya, “The Marsh Girl”. 

About five years after Tate leaves her, Kya falls in love with another man. The story becomes complicated here when at the same time, Tate comes back for Kya. Then one day, the second man Kya falls in love with is found dead and the town begins to investigate.

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This story touched me in so many ways. What I admire most about the protagonist, Kya, is her independence. Kya possessed what few could ever do. She took what little she’d been given, educated herself about the swamp.  Through these heart-wrenching instances where she was abandoned, I felt torn and nuanced (if that’s an appropriate adjective!). Kya had learned to rely on herself, but this also diminished her abilities to self-advocate which retaliated against her favor. Kya was afraid to speak up for herself since she’d been taught from a young age that she was the only person she could ever rely on. Her parents had left her, as had her siblings, and even her lover had broken his promise to return. Questions arose for me. How hard is it to earn trust? How many times can others break their promises before an individual retracts from trusting others? Perhaps Kya is one who had been abandoned one too many times which affected her ability to seek aid and support from others. I also love how this book uses nature and wildlife to explain expectations for humans, as it reminds readers of how closely connected we are to the animals who may live outside our doors. Owens crafts a story in which humans and nature become one thing.

Delia Owens has fantastic writing. I mean this in the sense that not only was her plot well thought out, but her prose in itself is like poetry. Her alliteration and description vividly brought to life the world in which Kya lives, particularly the nature scenes. Where the Crawdads Sing is not a difficult book to follow, though its chapters do flip between past and present. A must read!