Where the Crawdads Sing

We all need a place to go, to escape the realities of our daily lives, a place that author Delia Owens calls the place “Where the Crawdads Sing,” which is the title of her best-selling novel about a young girl who is abandoned to raise herself in a swamp after her mother dies and her father walks off one day. The story of Kya is mesmerizing, told with rich detail and gritty emotion and fascinating insights into swamp life. Kya is a survivor, a person who went to school for one day, then retreated to her swamp where she feels safe and protected. She learns how to fend for herself while studying the rich plethora of animal and insect life that occupies her time during the day so she only has to cope with the isolation of the nights.


A   young man, Tate, befriends Kya and teaches her how to read and write. Once she knows those two basic skills, she begins to catalog all the insects, the swamp creatures, and the migrating birds that form her world. She collects empty shells and discarded feathers, and other memorabilia of her habitat, then she curates the story of each object/item/collectible and paints a picture to show its origin. Tate is her only friend and she cherishes his visits. She also feels drawn to Jumpin’, a black man who purchases the mussels and other seafood Kya brings him almost daily, and sells her gasoline for the engine of her small boat. Jumpin’ doesn’t need what Kya brings him to sell, but he knows that she’s alone and has to have foodstuffs in order to survive. The third important person in Kya’s life is Chase, the nearby town’s man about town, the good-looking athlete from a well-to-do family who pursues Kya in spite of her oddities.  It is only when Kya reads in a newspaper that Chase is engaged to be married that she realizes that Chase has used her. She sends him off and vows never to be involved with him again.


Nature is the backstory, the neighborhood for the people and events of the novel. The reader can almost smell the fetid earth and hear the callings of the various birds that make the swamp home. Kya becomes a living representation of Mother Nature as she tells her story among the wildlife of the swamp. It is a fascinating story that sometimes moves slowly through the richness of the telling, and, at other times, moves quickly as Kya struggles to survive. This novel is not for everyone as it takes time and patience to read through the many events in Kya’s life, riding with her in her swamp boat as she tours her environment and catalogues it for the mere love of the recordkeeping, but it’s definitely a novel worth reading.