Where the Crawdads Sing
Where the Crawdads Sing is a 2018 coming-of-age[2][3] murder mystery novel by American zoologist Delia Owens.[4] The story follows two timelines that slowly intertwine. The first timeline describes the life and adventures of a young girl named Kya as she grows up isolated in the marshes of North Carolina. The second timeline follows an investigation into the apparent murder of Chase Andrews, a local celebrity of Barkley Cove, a fictional coastal town of North Carolina.[1][4][5]
This article is about the novel. For the film, see Where the Crawdads Sing (film).Author
By April 2023, the book had sold over 18 million copies. A film adaptation was released in July 2022.
Plot[edit]
Part I: The Marsh[edit]
In 1952, six-year-old Catherine Danielle Clark (nicknamed "Kya") watches her mother abandon her and her family due to violent abuse from her husband, Kya's father. While Kya waits in vain for her mother's return, she witnesses her older siblings, Missy, Murph, Mandy, and Jodie, all leave as well, due to their father's drinking and physical abuse. After her mother leaves, her father burns most of her mother's wardrobe and paintings.
Alone with her father—who temporarily stops drinking—Kya learns to fish. Her father gives her his knapsack to hold her collections of shells and feathers. The illiterate Kya paints these shells and feathers, as well as the marsh's creatures and shorelines, with watercolors her mother left behind.
One day Kya finds a letter from her mother in the mailbox and leaves it for her father to find, as she cannot read. When she returns to their home, she finds that he has burned the letter. He returns to drinking and takes long, frequent trips away to gamble. Eventually, he does not return at all, and Kya assumes he is dead, making him the last of the family to leave her alone in the marsh. Without money and family, she survives by gardening and trading fresh mussels and smoked fish for money and gas from Jumpin', a black man who owns a gasoline station at the boat dock. Jumpin' and his wife Mabel become lifelong friends to Kya, and Mabel collects donated clothing for her.
As Kya grows up, she faces prejudice from the townspeople of Barkley Cove, North Carolina, who nickname her "The Marsh Girl." She is laughed at by the schoolchildren on the only day she goes to school and is called "nasty" and "filthy" by a pastor's wife. However, she becomes friendly with Tate Walker, an old friend of Jodie's who sometimes fishes in the marsh. When Kya loses her bearings one day, Tate leads her home in his boat. Years later, he leaves her feathers from rare birds, then teaches her how to read and write. The two form a romantic relationship until Tate leaves for college at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He promises to return, yet later realizes Kya cannot live in his more civilized world because of how wild and independent she is, and leaves her without saying goodbye.
Meaning of title[edit]
Crawdad is an American slang word for crayfish: these crustaceans cannot sing, but when Kya's mother encouraged her to explore the marsh, she would often say: "Go as far as you can — way out yonder where the crawdads sing." When Tate also used the phrase, she asked him the meaning and he replied: "Just means far in the bush where critters are wild, still behaving like critters." Delia Owens was inspired to use the phrase because her own mother had used it when she was a child.[8]
Reception[edit]
The book was selected for Reese Witherspoon's book club in September 2018[9] and for Barnes & Noble's Best Books of 2018.[10]
By December 2019, the book had sold over 4.5 million copies, and it sold more print copies in 2019 than any other adult title, fiction or non-fiction.[11][12] It topped The New York Times Fiction Best Sellers of 2019 and The New York Times Fiction Best Sellers of 2020.[13][14] By February 2022, the book had spent 150 weeks on the best seller list.[15] By April 2022, the book had sold 12 million copies;[16] by July 2022, 15 million copies;[17] and by April 2023, 18 million copies,[18] making it one of the best-selling books of all time.[19][20][21][22]
Since "crawdad" is a regional term, it sparked a rise in online queries about the word's meaning.[23]
Aspects of Kya's life and the novel's narrative choices, including its attitude towards its Black characters, are said to be reminiscent of Owens' time in Zambia, where she, her then husband, and his son are still wanted for questioning in the killing of a poacher captured on film in a 1996 report by ABC News. Owens is not a suspect, but is considered a potential witness, co-conspirator, and accessory to felony crimes.[24]