Review: Where the Crawdads Sing

I wasn’t looking for a shrewd, sassy heroine badassing her way around the North Carolina swamps. But now that I’ve met the abandoned little girl who grows up all alone to become the storied and singular and oh-so-free-spirited voice of this novel, I’m completely smitten with living vicariously through her.

Where the Crawdads Sing is a beautifully written, exquisitely crafted tribute to an extraordinary life lived without compromise. It’s a naturalist’s love letter to the incomparable richness and allure of wildness and the tidal marshlands. It’s also a bit of an unconventional romance and a riveting murder mystery.

If you’re intrigued, I hope you’ll let me explain why I enjoyed this book so much. No spoilers, of course.

Go as far as you can — way out yonder where the crawdads sing.

Simply stated, this book tells the fictional life story of Kya Clark, whose entire family leaves her alone as a child to fend for herself, deep in the North Carolina swamps. Here’s what Goodreads has to say:

For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. She’s barefoot and wild; unfit for polite society. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark.

But Kya is not what they say. Abandoned at age ten, she has survived on her own in the marsh that she calls home. A born naturalist with just one day of school, she takes life lessons from the land, learning from the false signals of fireflies the real way of this world. But while she could have lived in solitude forever, the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. Drawn to two young men from town, who are each intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new and startling world — until the unthinkable happens.

Kya’s spirit is as complex and vibrant and resilient as the teeming ecosystem she roams freely and comes to know intimately. The swamps serenade her with their siren’s song. Their abundant waters seemingly stream through her veins. Their verdant shores deeply root and nurture her.

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.

Kya has a formidable mind and an indomitable zest for independence. She’s wily enough to avoid capture or oversight. She’s curious and clever enough to teach herself (almost) everything she needs to know about life through careful observation, and just barely wise enough to reach out for help when it’s really important. Her story meanders naturally, and at times languidly, but is ultimately empowering and uplifting in delightfully unexpected ways.

There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot.

She learns to live off the bounty around her and to buy what she can’t make by selling various things, starting with shellfish. She develops a passionate vocation. She finds a few friends along the way whom she can trust. And she meets two very different boys who touch her heart profoundly and change her life irrevocably.

She knew that no part of this yearning made sense. Illogical behavior to fill an emptiness would not fulfill much more. How much do you trade to defeat loneliness?

The quiet, understated prose in Where the Crawdad’s Sing mirrors the setting for the story. It is mesmerizing, like the slow, steady flow of the rivers through the marshes to the ocean. It is poetic with a lyrical rhythm. (And there’s poetry, too.)

Don’t go on thinking poetry’s just for sissies. There’s mushy love poems, for sure, but there’s also funny ones, lots about nature, war even. Whole point of it — they make ya feel something.

The Marsh, Razvan Balotescu (Source)

It is breathtakingly beautiful and sensorially resplendent. I could practically inhale the stifling humidity, feel the steady hum of life reverberating through my bones, and taste the sweet, pungent odors of decay and rebirth in the air. I delighted in each new discovery of flora and fauna that Kya so lovingly observes and catalogs. It’s clear that the author, like her character, shares a powerful connection to wild natural habitat and a deep appreciation for the delicate, dangerous, and intricately fascinating web of life. Through the story’s lens we explore the hidden layers, follow the vibrant pulse, slowly seduced to wade in deeper and deeper.

Kya knew judgment had no place here. Evil was not in play, just life pulsing on, even at the expense of some of the players. Biology sees right and wrong as the same color in different light.

But don’t be lulled into complacence. Water continually adapts its myriad pathways through Nature’s obstacles, or whims, or whatever. And just when you think it’s safe to crack open a cold one and stop minding the boat, there’s always another twist around the bend.

The marsh did not confine them but defined them and, like any sacred ground, kept their secrets deep.

Congaree National Park, Clyde Butcher Photography (Source)

As it turns out, the author Delia Owens grew up very close to where I did in the southeastern U.S. She then worked as a wildlife scientist in Africa, where she witnessed again and again the abiding strength of female groups in Nature. She never forgot the girlfriends she grew up with or the singular beauty of the southern wilds. And although she now lives in Idaho, she set her first novel in that land where her youthful heart roamed and dedicated it to the girlfriends who roamed by her side.

I am extremely grateful that Owens chose to express her love for her childhood home in a book. As another former resident, I express my love for the beautiful things I remember about the south by reading stories about them. She has captured them to perfection. She has indelibly transformed my understanding of lightning bugs (aka fireflies), a deceptively cheery little visitor to my childhood evenings that I am now rather in awe of!! She has also woven all the best of the wild and folksy wisdom of my childhood into an absolutely unforgettable story of fearlessness, perseverance, and love. For me, this book is a gift to be treasured.

Ya need some girlfriends, hon, ‘cause they’re furever. Without a vow. A clutch of women’s the most tender, most tough place on Earth.

This Wench rates Where the Crawdads Sing: