Where The Crawdads Sing
Marsh girl Kya Clark has been left to fend for herself in a rundown shack outside Barkley Cove. Most of the village treats her as an outcast and pariah, while she grows up all alone into a young woman, and a sensitive, artistic naturalist. When rich kid Chase Andrews is found dead in the marsh, the locals immediately suspect Kya.
This is a complex, layered novel with many different parallel stories running alongside each other. It’s a biography, a study of human behaviour in isolation and the nature of loneliness, a paean to the natural beauty of the Carolina marshes, the need in human beings for emotional connections, a police procedural, a view of life in America before the civil rights movement and a courtroom drama.
Catherine “Kya” Clark has grown up in a little run-down shack in the marsh near Barkley Cove. She’s the youngest of several siblings, and her abusive and alcoholic father caused all members of the family to leave, one by one, once they felt they were better off themselves. Once her mother leaves, her father actually sobers down, and helps Kya learn to fish, and use the boat. But her father disappears too, when she’s about six. From then on, she has played cat-and-mouse with social services, and surviving by trading mussels she catches in the marsh for fuel and money.
She makes it to school, but is mocked and jeered by the other children incessantly. The one day she attended was so traumatic, she never returns. She contents herself by spending time in the marshes, with the hundreds of creatures which, like herself, call it home.
Apart from the owner of the store where she buys her fuel, her one friend in the world is Tate, an older boy who used to play with her brother Jodie. Tate teaches her to read and write, and catalogue the hundreds of shells, feathers and creatures she encounters in the marsh. She takes to drawing everything she sees, using pencil sketches and vivid water colours.
Her friendship with Tate grows to romance, which is cut abruptly when he leaves for college. He returns several years later, a certified naturalist, and in the interim, her collection of paintings and artifacts has grown so exhaustive and voluminous, he encourages her to publish her findings. The book is a moderate success, and she is commissioned to write several more.
While all of the above is going on, the body of Chase Andrews, former football star and town rich kid is found in the marshes. While it seems like it might have been accidental, the complete lack of fingerprints and footprints leads the police to suspect foul play, and the witnesses all swear to altercations between Kya and Chase. Kya is arrested and is stuck in jail for over two months. But all the police have are circumstantial evidence. What will become of Kya.
A gripping page turner which keeps the reader riveted from start to finish. The casual cruelty displayed by “good” townsfolk towards anyone who does not fit their mould is frustrating to see, but all too real in a USA which was still coming to terms with civil rights for black folk. It often seems like the book is trying to be a little bit of every genre, but still manages to be good at all genres. An excellent read all around.