Where the Crawdads Sing begins with a death: in 1969, a young man from town – popular, handsome – is found with a broken neck after a fall. The police (and the town) immediately suspects murder, specifically that the infamous Marsh Girl killed Chase.
“Sometimes she heard night-sounds she didn’t know or jumped from lightning too close, but whenever she stumbled, it was the land who caught her. Until at last, at some unclaimed moment, the heart-pain seeped away like water into sand. Still there, but deep. Kya laid her hand upon the breathing, wet earth, and the marsh became her mother.”
Here, the book takes us back in time (without any confusion, ahem, Jessica Knoll) to when the Marsh Girl was just Kya – a young girl living with a violent father, isolated from the world. One by one the rest of her family leaves, until it is only Kya. She grows up wild but kind, living among the plants and the animals and the marsh. Visits from the outside – truant officers, social workers, cruel people from town – end badly every time. Eventually, she befriends a boy from town. With his help and encouragement, she begins massive collections of wildlife – shells and plants and skeletons – and catalogues it all. Thirsty for knowledge, she reads everything she can. And then Chase’s body is found.
“She knew the years of isolation had altered her behavior until she was different from others, but it wasn’t her fault she’d been alone. Most of what she knew, she’d learned from the wild. Nature had nurtured, tutored, and protected her when no one else would.”
It’s such a beautiful book. The descriptions of the marsh are rich and detailed. The murder mystery is interesting, but the true draw of the novel is Kya herself, living among the marsh and soaking in that world.