Where the Crawdads Sing
She raised herself in the marsh and they called her wild. Owens writes nature with a biologist's precision and a novelist's heart.
The Marsh Girl
Delia Owens's 2018 debut novel follows Kya Clark, the Marsh Girl of Barkley Cove, a fictional town on the North Carolina coast. Abandoned by her family one by one, Kya raises herself on the edge of the marsh, learning its ecology with the help of two boys who enter her life at different times. When a local man is found dead at the base of a fire tower, the town points at Kya. The novel moves between two timelines, following Kya's childhood and the 1969 murder investigation. Owens is a wildlife scientist and her descriptions of the marsh are extraordinary. The novel spent over 200 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.
Reading Where the Crawdads Sing
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"She was the marsh and the marsh was her.
"Delia Owens
Owens is a wildlife scientist who spent years living in Africa studying elephant and lion behaviour. She and her husband were the subjects of a real unsolved murder investigation in Zambia that was reported by The New Yorker in 2019.
The novel was Reese Witherspoon's book club pick before publication and debuted at number one. It sat on the bestseller list for over four years. The 2022 film adaptation grossed over $200 million worldwide.