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Where the Crawdads Sing: Reese's Book Club (A Novel) Hardcover – August 14, 2018
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More than 18 million copies sold worldwide
A Reese’s Book Club Pick
A Business Insider Defining Book of the Decade
“I can't even express how much I love this book! I didn't want this story to end!”—Reese Witherspoon
“Painfully beautiful.”—The New York Times Book Review
For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life—until the unthinkable happens.
Where the Crawdads Sing is at once an exquisite ode to the natural world, a heartbreaking coming-of-age story, and a surprising tale of possible murder. Owens reminds us that we are forever shaped by the children we once were, and that we are all subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.
- Print length384 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherG.P. Putnam's Sons
- Publication dateAugust 14, 2018
- Dimensions6.28 x 1.31 x 9.29 inches
- ISBN-100735219095
- ISBN-13978-0735219090
- Lexile measure880L
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Editorial Reviews
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Review
“Steeped in the rhythms and shadows of the coastal marshes of North Carolina’s Outer Banks, this fierce and hauntingly beautiful novel centers on...Kya’s heartbreaking story of learning to trust human connections, intertwine[d] with a gripping murder mystery, revealing savage truths. An astonishing debut.”—People
“This lush mystery is perfect for fans of Barbara Kingsolver.”—Bustle
“A lush debut novel, Owens delivers her mystery wrapped in gorgeous, lyrical prose. It’s clear she’s from this place—the land of the southern coasts, but also the emotional terrain—you can feel it in the pages. A magnificent achievement, ambitious, credible and very timely.”—Alexandra Fuller, New York Times bestselling author of Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight
“Heart-wrenching...A fresh exploration of isolation and nature from a female perspective along with a compelling love story.”—Entertainment Weekly
“This wonderful novel has a bit of everything—mystery, romance, and fascinating characters, all told in a story that takes place in North Carolina.”—Nicholas Sparks, New York Times bestselling author of Every Breath
“Delia Owen’s gorgeous novel is both a coming-of-age tale and an engrossing whodunit.”—Real Simple
“Evocative...Kya makes for an unforgettable heroine.”—Publishers Weekly
“The New Southern novel...A lyrical debut.”—Southern Living
“A nature-infused romance with a killer twist.”—Refinery29
“Anyone who liked The Great Alone will want to read Where the Crawdads Sing....This astonishing debut is a beautiful and haunting novel that packs a powerful punch. It’s the first novel in a long time that made me cry.”—Kristin Hannah, author ofThe Great AloneandThe Nightingale
“Both a coming-of-age story and a mysterious account of a murder investigation told from the perspective of a young girl...Through Kya’s story, Owens explores how isolation affects human behavior, and the deep effect that rejection can have on our lives.”—Vanity Fair
“Lyrical...Its appeal ris[es] from Kya’s deep connection to the place where makes her home, and to all of its creatures.”—Booklist
“This beautiful, evocative novel is likely to stay with you for many days afterward....absorbing.”—AARP
“This haunting tale captivates every bit as much for its crime drama elements as for the humanity at its core.” —Mystery & Suspense Magazine
“Compelling, original...A mystery, a courtroom drama, a romance and a coming-of-age story, Where the Crawdads Sing is a moving, beautiful tale. Readers will remember Kya for a long, long time.”—ShelfAwareness
“With prose luminous as a low-country moon, Owens weaves a compelling tale of a forgotten girl in the unforgiving coastal marshes of North Carolina. It is a murder mystery/love story/courtroom drama that readers will love, but the novel delves so much deeper into the bone and sinew of our very nature, asking often unanswerable questions, old and intractable as the marsh itself. A stunning debut!”—Christopher Scotton, author of The Secret Wisdom of the Earth
“A compelling mystery with prose so luminous it can cut through the murkiest of pluff mud.”—Augusta Chronicle
“Carries the rhythm of an old time ballad. It is clear Owens knows this land intimately, from the black mud sucking at footsteps to the taste of saltwater and the cry of seagulls.”—David Joy, author of The Line That Held Us
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Ma
1952
The morning burned so August-hot, the marsh's moist breath hung the oaks and pines with fog. The palmetto patches stood unusually quiet except for the low, slow flap of the heron's wings lifting from the lagoon. And then, Kya, only six at the time, heard the screen door slap. Standing on the stool, she stopped scrubbing grits from the pot and lowered it into the basin of worn-out suds. No sounds now but her own breathing. Who had left the shack? Not Ma. She never let the door slam.
But when Kya ran to the porch, she saw her mother in a long brown skirt, kick pleats nipping at her ankles, as she walked down the sandy lane in high heels. The stubby-nosed shoes were fake alligator skin. Her only going-out pair. Kya wanted to holler out but knew not to rouse Pa, so opened the door and stood on the brick-'n'-board steps. From there she saw the blue train case Ma carried. Usually, with the confidence of a pup, Kya knew her mother would return with meat wrapped in greasy brown paper or with a chicken, head dangling down. But she never wore the gator heels, never took a case.
Ma always looked back where the foot lane met the road, one arm held high, white palm waving, as she turned onto the track, which wove through bog forests, cattail lagoons, and maybe-if the tide obliged-eventually into town. But today she walked on, unsteady in the ruts. Her tall figure emerged now and then through the holes of the forest until only swatches of white scarf flashed between the leaves. Kya sprinted to the spot she knew would bare the road; surely Ma would wave from there, but she arrived only in time to glimpse the blue case-the color so wrong for the woods-as it disappeared. A heaviness, thick as black-cotton mud, pushed her chest as she returned to the steps to wait.
Kya was the youngest of five, the others much older, though later she couldn't recall their ages. They lived with Ma and Pa, squeezed together like penned rabbits, in the rough-cut shack, its screened porch staring big-eyed from under the oaks.
Jodie, the brother closest to Kya, but still seven years older, stepped from the house and stood behind her. He had her same dark eyes and black hair; had taught her birdsongs, star names, how to steer the boat through saw grass.
"Ma'll be back," he said.
"I dunno. She's wearin' her gator shoes."
"A ma don't leave her kids. It ain't in 'em."
"You told me that fox left her babies."
"Yeah, but that vixen got 'er leg all tore up. She'd've starved to death if she'd tried to feed herself 'n' her kits. She was better off to leave 'em, heal herself up, then whelp more when she could raise 'em good. Ma ain't starvin', she'll be back." Jodie wasn't nearly as sure as he sounded, but said it for Kya.
Her throat tight, she whispered, "But Ma's carryin' that blue case like she's goin' somewheres big."
The shack sat back from the palmettos, which sprawled across sand flats to a necklace of green lagoons and, in the distance, all the marsh beyond. Miles of blade-grass so tough it grew in salt water, interrupted only by trees so bent they wore the shape of the wind. Oak forests bunched around the other sides of the shack and sheltered the closest lagoon, its surface so rich in life it churned. Salt air and gull-song drifted through the trees from the sea.
Claiming territory hadn't changed much since the 1500s. The scattered marsh holdings weren't legally described, just staked out natural-a creek boundary here, a dead oak there-by renegades. A man doesn't set up a palmetto lean-to in a bog unless he's on the run from somebody or at the end of his own road.
The marsh was guarded by a torn shoreline, labeled by early explorers as the "Graveyard of the Atlantic" because riptides, furious winds, and shallow shoals wrecked ships like paper hats along what would become the North Carolina coast. One seaman's journal read, "rang'd along the Shoar . . . but could discern no Entrance . . . A violent Storm overtook us . . . we were forced to get off to Sea, to secure Ourselves and Ship, and were driven by the Rapidity of a strong Current . . .
"The Land . . . being marshy and Swamps, we return'd towards our Ship . . . Discouragement of all such as should hereafter come into those Parts to settle."
Those looking for serious land moved on, and this infamous marsh became a net, scooping up a mishmash of mutinous sailors, castaways, debtors, and fugitives dodging wars, taxes, or laws that they didn't take to. The ones malaria didn't kill or the swamp didn't swallow bred into a woodsmen tribe of several races and multiple cultures, each of whom could fell a small forest with a hatchet and pack a buck for miles. Like river rats, each had his own territory, yet had to fit into the fringe or simply disappear some day in the swamp. Two hundred years later, they were joined by runaway slaves, who escaped into the marsh and were called maroons, and freed slaves, penniless and beleaguered, who dispersed into the water-land because of scant options.
Maybe it was mean country, but not an inch was lean. Layers of life-squiggly sand crabs, mud-waddling crayfish, waterfowl, fish, shrimp, oysters, fatted deer, and plump geese-were piled on the land or in the water. A man who didn't mind scrabbling for supper would never starve.
It was now 1952, so some of the claims had been held by a string of disconnected, unrecorded persons for four centuries. Most before the Civil War. Others squatted on the land more recently, especially after the World Wars, when men came back broke and broke-up. The marsh did not confine them but defined them and, like any sacred ground, kept their secrets deep. No one cared that they held the land because nobody else wanted it. After all, it was wasteland bog.
Just like their whiskey, the marsh dwellers bootlegged their own laws-not like those burned onto stone tablets or inscribed on documents, but deeper ones, stamped in their genes. Ancient and natural, like those hatched from hawks and doves. When cornered, desperate, or isolated, man reverts to those instincts that aim straight at survival. Quick and just. They will always be the trump cards because they are passed on more frequently from one generation to the next than the gentler genes. It is not a morality, but simple math. Among themselves, doves fight as often as hawks.
Ma didnÕt come back that day. No one spoke of it. Least of all Pa. Stinking of fish and drum likker, he clanked pot lids. ÒWharÕs supper?Ó
Eyes downcast, the brothers and sisters shrugged. Pa dog-cussed, then limp-stepped out, back into the woods. There had been fights before; Ma had even left a time or two, but she always came back, scooping up whoever would be cuddled.
The two older sisters cooked a supper of red beans and cornbread, but no one sat to eat at the table, as they would have with Ma. Each dipped beans from the pot, flopped cornbread on top, and wandered off to eat on their floor mattresses or the faded sofa.
Kya couldn't eat. She sat on the porch steps, looking down the lane. Tall for her age, bone skinny, she had deep-tanned skin and straight hair, black and thick as crow wings.
Darkness put a stop to her lookout. Croaking frogs would drown the sounds of footsteps; even so, she lay on her porch bed, listening. Just that morning she'd awakened to fatback crackling in the iron skillet and whiffs of biscuits browning in the wood oven. Pulling up her bib overalls, she'd rushed into the kitchen to put the plates and forks out. Pick the weevils from the grits. Most dawns, smiling wide, Ma hugged her-"Good morning, my special girl"-and the two of them moved about the chores, dancelike. Sometimes Ma sang folk songs or quoted nursery rhymes: "This little piggy went to market." Or she'd swing Kya into a jitterbug, their feet banging the plywood floor until the music of the battery-operated radio died, sounding as if it were singing to itself at the bottom of a barrel. Other mornings Ma spoke about adult things Kya didn't understand, but she figured Ma's words needed somewhere to go, so she absorbed them through her skin, as she poked more wood in the cookstove. Nodding like she knew.
Then, the hustle of getting everybody up and fed. Pa not there. He had two settings: silence and shouting. So it was just fine when he slept through, or didn't come home at all.
But this morning, Ma had been quiet; her smile lost, her eyes red. She'd tied a white scarf pirate style, low across her forehead, but the purple and yellow edges of a bruise spilled out. Right after breakfast, even before the dishes were washed, Ma had put a few personals in the train case and walked down the road.
The next morning,Kya took up her post again on the steps, her dark eyes boring down the lane like a tunnel waiting for a train. The marsh beyond was veiled in fog so low its cushy bottom sat right on the mud. Barefoot, Kya drummed her toes, twirled grass stems at doodlebugs, but a six-year-old canÕt sit long and soon she moseyed onto the tidal flats, sucking sounds pulling at her toes. Squatting at the edge of the clear water, she watched minnows dart between sunspots and shadows.
Jodie hollered to her from the palmettos. She stared; maybe he was coming with news. But as he wove through the spiky fronds, she knew by the way he moved, casual, that Ma wasn't home.
"Ya wanta play explorers?" he asked.
"Ya said ya're too old to play 'splorers."
"Nah, I just said that. Never too old. Race ya!"
They tore across the flats, then through the woods toward the beach. She squealed as he overtook her and laughed until they reached the large oak that jutted enormous arms over the sand. Jodie and their older brother, Murph, had hammered a few boards across the branches as a lookout tower and tree fort. Now, much of it was falling in, dangling from rusty nails.
Usually if she was allowed to crew at all it was as slave girl, bringing her brothers warm biscuits swiped from Ma's pan.
But today Jodie said, "You can be captain."
Kya raised her right arm in a charge. "Run off the Spaniards!" They broke off stick-swords and crashed through brambles, shouting and stabbing at the enemy.
Then-make-believe coming and going easily-she walked to a mossy log and sat. Silently, he joined her. He wanted to say something to get her mind off Ma, but no words came, so they watched the swimming shadows of water striders.
Kya returned to the porch steps later and waited for a long time, but, as she looked to the end of the lane, she never cried. Her face was still, her lips a simple thin line under searching eyes. But Ma didn't come back that day either.
2.
Jodie
1952
After Ma left, over the next few weeks, Kya's oldest brother and two sisters drifted away too, as if by example. They had endured Pa's red-faced rages, which started as shouts, then escalated into fist-slugs, or backhanded punches, until one by one, they disappeared. They were nearly grown anyway. And later, just as she forgot their ages, she couldn't remember their real names, only that they were called Missy, Murph, and Mandy. On her porch mattress, Kya found a small pile of socks left by her sisters.
On the morning when Jodie was the only sibling left, Kya awakened to the clatter-clank and hot grease of breakfast. She dashed into the kitchen, thinking Ma was home frying corn fritters or hoecakes. But it was Jodie, standing at the woodstove, stirring grits. She smiled to hide the letdown, and he patted the top of her head, gently shushing her to be quiet: if they didn't wake Pa, they could eat alone. Jodie didn't know how to make biscuits, and there wasn't any bacon, so he cooked grits and scrambled eggs in lard, and they sat down together, silently exchanging glances and smiles.
They washed their dishes fast, then ran out the door toward the marsh, he in the lead. But just then Pa shouted and hobbled toward them. Impossibly lean, his frame seemed to flop about from poor gravity. His molars yellow as an old dog's teeth.
Kya looked up at Jodie. "We can run. Hide in the mossy place."
"It's okay. It'll be okay," he said.
Later, near sunset, Jodie found Kya on the beach staring at the sea. As he stepped up beside her, she didnÕt look at him but kept her eyes on the roiling waves. Still, she knew by the way he spoke that Pa had slugged his face.
"I hafta go, Kya. Can't live here no longer."
She almost turned to him, but didn't. Wanted to beg him not to leave her alone with Pa, but the words jammed up.
"When you're old enough you'll understand," he said. Kya wanted to holler out that she may be young, but she wasn't stupid. She knew Pa was the reason they all left; what she wondered was why no one took her with them. She'd thought of leaving too, but had nowhere to go and no bus money.
"Kya, ya be careful, hear. If anybody comes, don't go in the house. They can get ya there. Run deep in the marsh, hide in the bushes. Always cover yo' tracks; I learned ya how. And ya can hide from Pa, too." When she still didn't speak, he said good-bye and strode across the beach to the woods. Just before he stepped into the trees, she finally turned and watched him walk away.
"This little piggy stayed home," she said to the waves.
Breaking her freeze, she ran to the shack. Shouted his name down the hall, but Jodie's things were already gone, his floor bed stripped bare.
She sank onto his mattress, watching the last of that day slide down the wall. Light lingered after the sun, as it does, some of it pooling in the room, so that for a brief moment the lumpy beds and piles of old clothes took on more shape and color than the trees outside.
A gnawing hunger-such a mundane thing-surprised her. She walked to the kitchen and stood at the door. All her life the room had been warmed from baking bread, boiling butter beans, or bubbling fish stew. Now, it was stale, quiet, and dark. "Who's gonna cook?" she asked out loud. Could have asked, Who's gonna dance?
Product details
- Publisher : G.P. Putnam's Sons; Later prt. edition (August 14, 2018)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 384 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0735219095
- ISBN-13 : 978-0735219090
- Lexile measure : 880L
- Item Weight : 1.28 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.28 x 1.31 x 9.29 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #3,468 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #130 in Mothers & Children Fiction
- #162 in Coming of Age Fiction (Books)
- #484 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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About the author
Delia Owens is the co-author of three internationally bestselling nonfiction books about her life as a wildlife scientist in Africa including Cry of the Kalahari.
She has won the John Burroughs Award for Nature Writing and has been published in Nature, The African Journal of Ecology, and many others.
She currently lives in Idaho. Where the Crawdads Sing is her first novel.
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The first section (‘The Marsh’) of the book is very slowly paced. Owens writes poetically, yet clearly, vividly painting the world of the marsh as Kya sees it. This section is not motivated by much plot, which makes it a bit difficult to stick with it, but simultaneously, it draws the reader into the slow pace of Kya’s limited world. It’s a lot of exposition, which can be hard to get through, but it’s all necessary to lay the foundation for the latter part of the book.
The pace of the story picks up in the ‘Swamp’ section, just like the pace of Kya’s life. I won’t say much about it, as I don’t want to give spoilers, but it becomes a lot harder to put down by this point.
The only part of this book that I hated was the dual timeline/year-jumping. To be fair, I usually hate this literary device and this book is no different. I caught myself going back and forth to check the year at the beginning of the chapter often. There are times when it’s successful, but it generally feels unnecessary and burdensome.
All and all this is a beautiful book, that delves into themes of love, coming-of-age, community, prejudice, nature, and what makes us human.
To be clear this is fiction and fiction always, always requires some suspending of belief. In this book, there are no car chases or major escape scenes or near misses for the detective or blown up cars so if action-packed is what one enjoys, then this book doubtless would not suit those readers. On the other hand consider this small literary passage from WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING:
"She stared at dust motes, dancing silently in one direction as though following some dreamy leader. When they hit the shadows, they vanished. Without the sun they are nothing."
I've seen dust motes many a time so I marvel that an author can give such personality to them! Of course, most of the beautiful words revolve around the marsh and its inhabitants, Kya, her family, her loneliness and her feelings and the townspeople not dust motes. However, that snippet is classic to how well written this book is all throughout. Of note Asheville is not as close to the coast as some other North Carolina cities but Asheville is surrounded by mountains, an attraction held out to Kya (a full day trip she is told), plus her paternal grandparents reportedly lived there (not a spoiler).
The mystery is handled perfectly. But that mystery is only one element of the book. It is so much more than that. Kya is not the first young child (real or imagined) who had to (has to) survive against many odds: in Kya's instance, the erratic Monday money for food while still a child just to name one. Other discussion points such as whether or not it's fire flies or lightning bugs is so beside the point IMO since it depends on where one grew up. We called them lightning bugs but out of town relatives called them fire flies. They are the same insect and very entertaining to watch. Kya tells us much about these insects that I did not know and this information fit into the story. (BTW, there is a great show in the Smokies put on by lightning bugs (fire flies) during their mating season. People actually take chairs and go watch!) Aside from quibbles about southernisms (LOL) some have, the book holds one's attention from beginning to end. The ending was perfect. It suited the book I believe. This book has earned its 5-star rating and I hope Ms. Owens writes another book soon.
Finally, the descriptions of the marsh itself and its many inhabitants, including Kya, is worth the price of the book yet the reader gets all these bonuses: a mystery, human survival, human relations contrasted with extraordinary naturalist behavior and descriptions and an aching heart for all the Kya's of the world. Highly recommended for those who like a great story interwoven amongst beautiful, haunting words. I won't remember that blown up car in a beach read beyond next week even though the book was fun to read but WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING will live with me (and other readers) for a very long time. An extraordinary book!
In the next chapter, we jump back in time to the story's beginning. The story's main character is very young, and her family is on the fringes of society in this marsh wasteland. Her plight and heritage are well described.
Like Chase, the nearby town boy, we get other characters in Kya's daily life. Her interconnections are far and few between, but we have a few dependent characters like Jumpin, Mable, and Tate. We jump back and forth in the timeline. Is this story a murder mystery fiction?
As Kya's life and years continue, we learn important information about her struggles and surroundings.
As we start the second part of this story, Kya is a grown woman, just about adult age. Her coming-of-age is filled with adventure, friendships, and living off the land.
The murder mystery and romance in this book's second part are intriguing. The evidence is being made to point to Kya, but is it really? The book certainly pulls on your sympathetic emotions. Even grown up and now in her 20s, her story of abandonment and survival is riveting.
The courtroom presiding part is excruciating to read, revealing the reader's heavy basis toward Kya. However, the results are fascinating. This book ends quite unexpectedly, and Kya and Tate finally get their happy lives, but even at the end, it takes a turn for the unexpected. You can hypothesize all you want on the who did it mystery, but it never outright tells you exactly. Unfortunately, the end theory isn't hard evidence. It never reveals precisely what happened in the storyline.
Top reviews from other countries
And easy read after reading a more complicated book.
Anyway, this book destroyed me.
I took a little to warm up to it, it's written splendidly, but with a thick southern accent, and for not English (actually American) mother tongue it can be difficult. Anyway, I came to appreciate this difficulty, it was the same struggle Kya was going through in her childhood, alone and with little way of understanding and being understood.
As the book progressed, both because I got used to the writing and because Kya became more and more acculturated, the story became smoother and faster-paced.
I think going into this book it's mandatory to read a little about Delia Owens's background. I was astonished by her knowledge of nature and around 30% of the book I read more about her background as a zoologist and natural science doctor. This not just makes extreme sense, but also makes the reading experience so much better. The moment I became aware all the little things were not fiction, but it was a well-crafted frame to explain human and natural behavior, it was like I was reading with a completely new set of eyes.
This story was so different and overwhelming.
Kya is one in a million, a pure soul and resilient nature, a survivor of others' cruelty.
I am convinced this book is not for everyone but is also something all should read. This book teaches the reader how sometimes a small gesture can change everything, how a single event can shape a person, how difficult it is to learn when few are ready to help, but mainly how a person can do anything, and achieve everything with resilience and willingness.
Like in nature, this book explains there is no right or wrong and people are mainly ruled by the surroundings and the pack's behavior, we see it many times throughout the book, starting with Kya's mother -and brother, and father-, passing through Chase, finishing with Kya herself.
The last 25% of the book is so good I cried so much I couldn't see anymore. It truly broke me.