My second read of 2022 which I finished in a matter of few days. I find good fiction very hard to resist!
Where the Crawdads Sing is a 2018 novel by American author and retired wildlife biologist, Delia Owens. It is a tender coming-of-age story set in the 50s and 60s of a girl who grows up in the remote wetlands of North Carolina.
The Book has been adapted to film with Fox 2000 owning the film rights. The film had been produced by Reese Witherspoon with Daisy Edgar-Jones playing the role of the main protagonist. The film is slated to release in July 2022.
***Plot***
Catherine Danielle Clark aka “Kya” Clark grows up in a rundown shack surrounded by marshes and swamps near the fictional town of Barkley Cove in North Carolina.
Kya is abandoned by her mother as a 6-year old child. Unable to bear the abuse by their alcoholic and unemployed father, her older siblings soon follow suit. Not able to depend on a (mostly) absentee and neglectful father, little Kya is forced to fend for herself. A few years down the line, even her father leaves her for good.
Kya then embarks on a journey in self-reliance where she learns how to garden and trade fresh mussels and smoked-fish for money and gas from Jumpin', a black man who owns a gasoline station for boats. She successfully evades attempts by truant officers and others to integrate her into a “normal” life. Utterly alone and ostracized by members of the community as a feral and reclusive “marsh girl”, Kya has only the local wildlife to keep her company. With no caregiver or formal education, she is nurtured, protected and schooled by Mother Nature. Studying the behaviors of marsh creatures, collecting shells and bird feathers becomes her main pastime. She forms a sole friendship with Tate, one of her brother’s friends who teaches her how to read and write, kindling a love of books and poetry but even that association is short-lived when Tate moves on to greener pastures.
As an adult, Kya enters into a discrete and complicated relationship with Chase Andrews, the town's golden boy. But when Chase shows up dead under mysterious circumstances, questions are raised and old prejudices are ignited. The story then enters the realm of a whodunnit.
What happens to Kya and how her story ends forms the remainder of the novel.
