As a reader, I stay away from the most recent bestsellers cause I am not always the biggest fan of modern prose. Once in a while, though, a book calls out to me, as did Where The Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. I saw it recommended on all my online reading apps, propped up on the local library shelves, and finally on my Netflix feed.
I don’t know if this was a cross-platform marketing conspiracy, but I decided to go for it. And I don’t regret it. One of my top reads of 2023, Where The Crawdad Sing has a lot going for it and a refreshingly original premise.
Alone In The Wilderness
There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot.
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing
In its early pages, it’s inevitable to make the parallels with Rudyard’s Kipling famous novel The Jungle Book, made infinitely more popular with its Disney film iterations. In that famous classic, a baby infant boy is raised by a panther and wolves. The jungle is his home and only as he reaches adolescence does the dangers of the wild become real and it’s time for him to return to civilization. But Where The Crawdads Sing is a more profound, grown-up tale.
Kya too is abandoned by her family at a young age. All she has ever known till then is her shack in the marshes and the love of her mother and siblings. One day she wakes up to find her mother gone, and a few weeks later all her siblings and she realizes, that her barely 7 year-old self is all by herself. Afraid to die in the wilderness, but afraid even more of civilization, the early days of this abandonment are cruel and harsh. She cannot leave her shack in the marshes as this is the only world she knows and what if someone came back home.
What begins an agonizingly lonely, and long journey into adulthood with the marshes, its birds, its tall grasses, its swampy creeks as her family.
Sometimes she heard night-sounds she didn’t know or jumped from lightning too close, but whenever she stumbled, it was the land who caught her. Until at last, at some unclaimed moment, the heart-pain seeped away like water into sand. Still there, but deep. Kya laid her hand upon the breathing, wet earth, and the marsh became her mother.
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing
There are visitors in her world. Both scary (the taunting teenage boys screaming at her in the dark or the social services looking to send her to school) and hopeful (her father makes a brief appearance, and then there is her friendship with Tate). However, one thing remains a constant theme in Kya’s life — isolation and abandonment.
The lonely became larger than she could hold. She wished for someone’s voice, presence, touch, but wished more to protect her heart.
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing
Photo by Leslie Cross on Unsplash
The North Carolina Coast
The novel is as much about Kya and her life as it is about the North Carolina marshes. In fact, one thing that I will remember years after having read is the beautiful prose describing Kya’s homeland.
Owens, a zoologist herself, is painstaking in her details about the ecosystem. This novel is her love letter to nature. Through Kya’s observations, we learn how the swamp sounds at night, the vibrant birds and details of their plumage, the coloring of shells on hidden beaches, the cycle of tides, and the mating cycles of insects. Owen’s protagonist is more at home with nature than with civilization.
She knew the years of isolation had altered her behavior until she was different from others, but it wasn’t her fault she’d been alone. Most of what she knew, she’d learned from the wild. Nature had nurtured, tutored, and protected her when no one else would.
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing
Kya & Tate’s friendship is also based on their mutual love for their habitat. Their friendship starts with an exchange of bird feathers and develops into hours spent exploring the marshes, observing its critters, and documenting all of it. Two little scientists falling in love with each other and natural wonders in the world.
Owens also hints at threat to the marshes from commercial development which could have devastating consequences to the ecosystem.
The Strange Murder
Where The Crawdads Sing opens up with dead body in the marshes. This early, it’s hard to tell if we are heading into a grisly mystery or a coming-of-age story. Kya’s ex-boyfriend, Chase Andrews, is not the most sympathetic of characters around town, but he is dead and justice must be served. After rather a dry investigation by the local sherriffs, Kya is charged with murder as they have found enough forensic evidence to tie her with Chase’s death.
Around 200 pages of the novel occupy the murder investigation and the following court trial. I struggled with this part of the plot and questioned what it brings to the story. Kya’s character arc, her relationship with nature and the handful of people in her life does not change through the course of the investigation. We learn nothing more about Chase that we didn’t already know. We learn nothing new about the prejudices of the town people against the lonely ‘Marsh Girl’ we didn’t already know.
So, the biggest contribution that Chase Andrews’s murder does to the plot is that it keeps the pace and maybe grab a few mystery-loving readers.
Why It Works
Delia Owens juggles a lot: multiple timelines, themes, and a murder mystery. But she made it work, and not once did I find my attention wavering. The novel starts with two major events spanning a decade. One in 1960 when Kya’s mother leaves her all by herself. Then 1969, when Chase Andrews’ dead body was discovered.
Owen then threads the story of Kya’s abandonment, jumping once in a while to the future to move forward the murder investigation. Owen then threads the story of Kya’s abandonment, her childhood and growing up, to the present murder investigation.
The writing is the strongest part of the book. Whether as the narrator or in Kya’s own voice, Owens’ prose is evocative, simple, and lyrical. The limited set of characters makes this uneventful book (yes, apart from the murder) interesting. You only have a handful of people, with Kya at its center, whose journeys you have to follow.
When I picked up the novel, I wasn’t sure what to expect. The premise seemed so otherworldly – a girl living alone in the marshes. What I didn’t expect to find is a love story, not one but many.
Between Kya and her father-figure Jumpin. Between Kya and Tate. And between Kya and the marshes.
