"Where the Crawdads Sing" by Delia Owens
Above: "Where the Crawdads Sing." Delia Owens - 368 Pages.
You get a science tutorial on the marsh, a great mystery, insights into our human prejudices, and a forthright description of genetic proclivities that push humans, animals, birds, and insects to survive.
NOTE: SPOILER PARAGRAPH ANNOTATED.
I completed reading the above book today.
The book narrative alternates time periods.
1969. An unexplained death (accident? murder?) occurs in in the North Carolina coastal town of Barkley Cove. Erstwhile Barkely Cove champion high school quarterback, Chase Andrews, and now community stalwart and family man (though he has a reputation for philandering), has been found dead at the base of a fire tower on the beach outside of town.
1953. Six year old girl, Kya, whose formerly patrician, now "white trash," family lives in a shack in the marshes of coastal North Carolina, watches, confused, as her family disintegrates at the hand of an abusive father.
Kya's violent father forces Mom and older children to flee. Dad, only home part of the time, is left with seven year old Kya. When Dad is away, Kya must fend for herself. When he's home, Dad shows some signs of treating the young girl better than he did his other, now departed, children, but, eventually he abandons Kya. He leaves the outboard boat, which enables Kya's access around the marshes and to Barkley Cove.
From eight years of age, Kya lives alone, yearning for Mom's return. Mom wanted take possession of her daughter, but, Dad destroyed Mom's correspondence asking to be reunited with Kya.
Kya survives by collecting mussels and selling them them in town for gas and grits money. Truant officers give up trying to get Kya to go to school. She eludes them in the marsh. Considered a pariah by most townsfolk, Kya, is befriended by "Jumpin" and family, the black man who owns the wharf and sells fuel to all the fishing boats in the area... including to Kya.
She has avoided formal schooling, but that doesn't mean she's not learning. Kya becomes one with the marsh. She collects insect specimens and shells. She learns to identify every bird species by one small feather. She has names for each of the gulls in the beach who have learned to expect from her their daily allotment of grits.
A few years later, two local boys take an interest in the marsh girl, as she is called by the locals.
One, Tate, seems to have noble intentions. He encounters Kya while fishing from his boat on a marsh lagoon. He notices Kya's astounding knowledge of the marsh and its animal and plant inhabitants. He is similarly interested in biology. Tate brings Kya books and art supplies. He teaches Kya to to read and helps her study. Fast forward...Kya becomes the poster child for auto didacticism and ends up writing a half dozen highly acclaimed, illustrated by her own hand, books on the marsh.
Tate and Kya develop a mutual attraction, but, never consummate. Tate wants to go further, but he respects Kya's innocent hesitancy. Tate, a good student, is accepted at University of North Carolina and eventually goes on to get a PhD in biology. Prior to his departure for college, Tate promises to return to Kya. He doesn't. Kya is devastated by his betrayal.
The other boy, Chase.Andrews, the local football hero, seeks out, post Tate, the "marsh girl" as a target for conquest. He's clever. Kya, burned by Tate, is wary of men's motives. Chase honors Kya's hesitancy to go too far too fast. He, however, eventually "triumphs." While living a conventional life with his fiancee in Barkley Cove, Chase pursues the tryst with Kya. Kya is gulled. Kya even gives Chase a precious shell necklace that he wears constantly, even while living his other life.
Chase promised Kya marriage, a home etc. Kya, whose only friends to that point, apart from Jumpin' and family, were birds and creatures of the marsh, does not have the insight to know she is being used by the dishonorable Chase.
Tate returns, full of remorse, to Barkley Cove. He knows his erstwhile betrayal of Kya still stings her, but, he also sees Chase's cunning deceit of Kya. Tate boats to the marsh to warn Kya about Chase, but Kya won't listen. Tate realizes that he and Kya share a love for the marsh and that he was wrong to not honor his promise to return to her post college. He continues his attempt to reconcile, but is unsuccessful.
Chase marries, leaves Kya devastated and embittered, once again, by a deceiving man. Kya resumes her solitary existence in the marsh... writes her books. Her dealings with publisher are by mail. Her books are acclaimed. She is awarded an honorary doctorate at the University of Carolina, but wary of being in the public eye, she does not attend the awards ceremony.
A leopard doesn't change its spots. Now married, Chase returns to the marsh in hopes of making another play for Kya. Kya, once burned, twice shy, resists. Chase becomes agressive. Too much so. Running away from a rape attempt, Kya yells out, "I will kill you if you come back here." There were witnesses.
1969. Kya is arrested for the murder of Chase Andrews.
There is a murder trial. One of the most skilled attorneys in North Carolina agrees to represent Kya, now a famous author, in the murder trial.
Kya has an alibi. She was in Greensboro, meeting with her publisher, on the night of the murder.
But, there is a lot of evidence suggesting her involvement... enough to have her arrested. She was "seen"" boating in the lagoon, at 2:30 AM, the time of the alleged murder, near the site where Chase's body was found, by two local shrimpers. Witnesses to the rape attempt attested to her threat to kill Chase.
There is also evidence supporting Kya's innocence. She was seen taking the bus to Greensboro, her publisher attested she was in Greensboro, and she was seen returning by bus from Greensboro the day after the alleged murder.
Still, there is doubt in Kya's alibi. It was possible to take an overnight bus from Greensboro to Barkley Cove, commit the crime, and then return by bus early AM to Greensboro. And, why did Kya want to forgo staying in Greensboro's top hotel rather than the dingy motel near the bus station, when her publisher would have foot the bill? Also, who was the thin "boy" on the bus late that night who could have been Kya in disguise?
In a persuasive closing argument, Kya's attorney details how the evidence presented by the prosecution does not support that Kya committed the crime. Also, the attorney asks the jury to remember how the town had rejected the "marsh girl" for years as a pariah, and yet, alone, she overcame their prejudices to become a published author of note.
During the trial. Kya is supported by Jumpin' and family, Tate, and her returned brother, Jodie.
Kya is acquitted. Tate joins her at the marsh shack, now rehabbed and plumbed with the help of royalties form Kya's book sales, to live out their lives on the marsh.
SPOILER PARAGRAPH: Kya dies at the age of 69, over forty years after Chase's murder. Tate, despondent, catalogs her papers and keepsakes. Tate finds a box beneath the floorboards. In it are a collection of poems that Kya had sent to regional journals under a pseudonym, including a poem, never published, that offers clues suggesting her involvement in Chase's murder. He also finds the shell necklace she had given to Chase and which Chase wore for years, but which was missing on discovery of his body. Chase, despondent, burns the poems, destroys the necklace strap and poignantly returns the shell to the sea shore.
The story reveals how isolation influences the behavior of a young woman, who like all humans, has the genetic propensity to belong to a group. The clues to the mystery are linked to the habitat of the marsh and natural histories of its wild creatures... as in, say, how the female firefly bites the head off of weaker males who attempt to mate with her.
This book is literature. Not storytelling. The writer is a biologist turned novelist. There is much eloquent description of the marsh and its inhabitants in the book. You get a science tutorial on the marsh, a great mystery, insights into our human prejudices, and a forthright description of genetic proclivities that push humans, animals, birds, and insects to survive.