Where the Crawdads Sing

Nonfiction author and wildlife scientist Delia Owens (Secrets of the Savanna, Cry of the Kalahari) makes her fictional debut with Where the Crawdads Sing, a compelling, original story of a girl who grows up alone in the marshes of the North Carolina coast. In 1952, Kya is just six years old when her mother leaves the family without a word. One by one, Kya's siblings soon move on, until it's down to just her and her father. Disappearing for weeks at a time, the hard-drinking man eventually abandons Kya, too, leaving her on her own. She'd learned a lot from him and her brother over the years about fishing and local plant and animal life, but Kya still finds it challenging to support herself deep in the unforgiving marshes of Barkley Cove.
 
The story moves back and forth between Kya growing up in isolation, passionate about the nature surrounding her, making only a few tenuous connections with other people and learning to love, and later, in 1969, when a body is found and the townspeople--and soon the police--suspect Kya, known to most only as the Marsh Girl. 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. --Suzan L. Jackson, freelance writer and author of Book By Book blog
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