Where the Crawdads Sing
By Delia Owens
2018, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 370 pages
It's easy to see why Delia Owens is on the New York Times best- selling author list, and why Where the Crawdads Sing has been talked about since it came out three years ago. The story itself grabs the reader with empathy for the main character. Kya is a six-year-old girl as the story opens, and is altogether abandoned by her mother, then her closest brother, and finally her alcoholic father who caused all the others to leave. By age seven, she is all alone in the North Carolina coastal swamp, surviving as best she can. One wonders, where are all the social workers, church people, school officials, etc.? But in the early 1950s, swamp dwellers were a subculture that was shunned and ignored by the more privileged, and Kya makes it into adulthood on her own. Her beloved marshlands help raise her, its flora and fauna becoming her family. How she becomes successful despite terrible poverty and lack of upbringing is her story.
Even though I resisted reading this popular “book club” novel (I almost never read what everyone else is reading) for a long time, I am glad I finally picked it up and then could not put it down. If you are among the few who have not read Where the Crawdads Sing, by all means “check it out”.
SB
