Where the Crawdads Sing

delia owens.

where the crawdads sing.

kaya clark is a creature of the marshlands.

all her life it's been everything she's known.

the gulls, tides, and quiet whisper of seagrass.

she's lived a lonely life of isolation with scattered family ties, little exposure to the rest of society, and practically zero money to speak of.

instead, she's survived solely off what the marsh has provided.

it's not like the outside world necessarily wanted much to do with her to begin with.

known simply as the marsh girl in the nearby fishing village of barkley cove, locals scoff and sneer on the rare occasion she comes into town.

that is, until there's a murder out in the marshlands.

and not the murder of any old marsher, but one of barkley cove's most idolized residents.

then the outside world comes looking for the girl they've long hoped would just disappear.

and this time, kaya won't be able to run from them anymore.

in this chapter to delia owens' where the crawdads sing, we'll guide you through a brief summary of all the twists and turns of this coming-of-age tale, and end with a brief analysis of the impact this book has had since its release.

my name's amanda, and this is one of our first fiction titles, so we're going to be trying something a little different than our usual chapters.

the original novel jumps between two main plot lines, a murder investigation in 1969 and the life of kaya beginning in 1946.

for the purpose of this chapter, we'll approach the story starting from the very beginning, and guide you through in chronological order.

so with that, let's begin.

part one.

childhood.

to most, the marshlands of north carolina's coast simply look like a swamp, harsh and unforgiving.

but if you take the time to listen, you'll hear them humming with life.

in the sand and water, there's a bounty of maritime treasure, crayfish, crabs, mussels, oysters, shrimp, and hundreds of fish species.

it's a place, in other words, that'll feed anyone who learns to catch their dinner.

kaya clark's parents never planned to be there for long.

both her mom and pa came from well-to-do, cultured southern families.

they met and courted in new orleans, and looked forward to raising a family in the farmhouse her pa's father had put aside for them.

but that house, like so much wealth, disappeared in the lean decade of the great depression.

then came world war ii.

pa fought in france.

he came back with a shattered leg, a meager monthly disability check, and memories that he drank to forget.

but liquor didn't make him forget.

it made him quarrelsome.

unable to hold down a job with three kids and a fourth on the way, kaya, the disability checks weren't enough.

so ma and pa pawned the family's furniture and bought a tumble-down shack in the marshes of north carolina.

after kaya was born in 1946, pa's drinking only got worse, and so did his temper.

in the beginning, his tongue had done the talking.

now, it was his hands, or belt.

ma and kaya's older brother, josie, got the worst of it.

it went on like that until, one sunny morning in 1952, ma put on her best dress and shoes and walked to the nearest bus stop.

kaya and josie watched from the porch.

he told her not to worry.

she'd be back soon enough.

they both knew it was a lie.

ma had gone forever.

the family drifted apart without ma.

kaya's two sisters left soon after.

josie followed them.

soon, it was only six-year-old kaya who remained.

pa did what he always did.

he cursed and hollered and disappeared for days on end, but there was an unspoken agreement between him and kaya.

he gave her a little money to buy groceries in town, and she did the chores.

mostly, though, she kept out of pa's way.

like the minnows in the lagoon, she darted from sunspots to shadows.

when pa's boat could be heard puttering homeward, she ran into the marsh and stayed there until his rage had burned itself out.

then, she went back and ate dinner with him at the kitchen table.

the school in barkley cove sent caseworkers out to bring marsh kids to school when they turned seven.

sure enough, when kaya turned seven, they came and took her in.

she'd never experienced such humiliation.

pa hadn't bought her shoes, so she went barefoot.

in her first class, the teacher asked for her to spell dog.

red-faced, she stuttered out, g-o-d.

the laughter of her classmates rang in her ears as she ran home.

she never set foot in that school again.

kaya's education was different from that of other kids.

she observed bird mating rituals and collected their feathers and studied the shells she found on beaches.

there was pa, too.

he never taught her anything by design, but it was impossible to be around him and not learn something.

pa knew the marsh like hawks know meadows.

he knew how to hunt, fish, scavenge, hide, set traps, and hide his traces.

when he wasn't drinking, he sometimes took kaya out in the boat.

they fished in silence until, suddenly, the questions poured out of her.

kaya's wide-eyed wonder spurred pa on to explain everything from goose seasons and fish habits to weather patterns and riptides.

for a moment, everything was beginning to seem okay with the world, until one day, pa didn't return home.

the boat, the only possession he cared for, was tied up by the shack.

that meant he wasn't coming back.

kaya was ten.

for the first time in her life, she was truly alone.

but there wasn't time to mourn.

hunger and the realization that she would have to provide for herself forced her to act.

kaya didn't know barkley cove.

not really.

she traded a few words with the shopkeepers who sold her cornmeal and occasionally asked why her mother didn't come in anymore.

she watched barkley kids playing on the beaches, but she kept her distance, avoiding the town and its inhabitants whenever she could.

with pa gone, that had to change.

barkley was a fishing town, and just about everyone had a boat.

locals bought fuel from a bait and tackle shop in the lagoon.

kaya knew it from fishing trips with pa.

she remembered that the shop also sold bags of glistening black mussels from the lagoon.

with no other means of finding money to eat, kaya asked the owner, a man called jumpin, if he'd also buy mussels from her.

jumpin replied that he'd buy them from whoever got there first in the morning.

so kaya started collecting mussels by moonlight to beat other pickers.

wasn't much, but that mussel money became more reliable than pa's checks had ever been.

part 2.

love.

it was 1960, and kaya was 14.

she was lithe and tall with long, dark hair, and she moved through the marsh with the easy agility of an animal in its natural habitat.

she still had that wide-eyed wonder.

she couldn't read or write, but she could draw just about anything.

in the evenings, she painted what she'd seen that day.

the images, colored with ma's old watercolors, hung on the walls alongside her growing collection of feathers and shells.

over time, a boy began coming to visit her in the marsh now and then.

tate walker.

he used to fish with her brother, jody, but that was a long time ago.

so when he first started coming by, kaya hid.

what did this barkly boy want from her?

truthfully, tate didn't have an answer to that question.

something he didn't fully understand brought him into the marsh.

so when they finally spoke, he stammered an excuse.

he wanted to help kaya.

he offered to teach her how to read and write.

something kaya didn't fully understand made her say yes.

soon after, tate's lessons began, and slowly, kaya began to read.

as she grew more confident, she started labeling her collections and exploring her ma's books.

by the end of summer, she was reading fluently, and tate started bringing her biology textbooks to her.

she wouldn't have read for another four years if she were at school.

that fall, she asked tate why he was really helping her.

he said he liked being in the marsh.

people in town thought it was a wasteland.

they didn't understand that the fish they caught depended on it.

he left out how he'd felt sorry for her being so alone, and worried about the boys in school he'd heard boasting that they'd be the ones to snatch her.

he didn't talk about the knot of emotions in his heart, either.

he couldn't disentangle it.

unable to speak and unable to bear the silence, he kissed her, and she kissed him back.

for the first time in her life, kaya's heart was full.

a year passed.

tate had finished his studies, and he was ready to go back to school.

he'd be studying biology at the university of north carolina, some 170 miles away in durham.

it wasn't supposed to be the end of kaya and tate.

he left in spring and promised to visit her on july 4th.

but tate didn't show that day, or any other day that summer.

kaya didn't know that tate had been in the marsh for a long time.

she'd been in the marsh for a long time, and he'd been in the marsh for a long time, or any other day that summer.

kaya didn't know that tate hadn't made it back on july 4th because his professors had invited him on a field trip, or that he'd come to apologize two weeks later.

tate had pulled up to her beach and saw kaya there alone, examining shells and lost in her own world.

he'd cut the motor so as not to startle her.

before he could call her name, another fishing boat had passed close to the shore, its motor shattering the silence.

kaya had jerked upright terror in her eyes and bolted into the forest.

it wasn't the noise which had scared her, it was the possibility of contact with the outside world.

tate had known about kaya's isolation, but he'd never seen her tormented soul up close before.

tate loved college.

he wanted to become a biologist.

the life he wanted, a life of travel and research and conversation, was opening up before him.

at that moment, he'd seen that kaya couldn't be part of that life, a life outside the marsh.

cursing at the coward inside who couldn't bring himself to say goodbye, tate turned his boat around and headed back to barkley.

kaya retreated into herself after tate's disappearance.

for four years, she hardly spoke a word to anyone but jumping from the bait and tackle shop, now more a father figure than friend.

reading was her only solace.

she devoured every book she could find about biology, nature, oceans, and animals.

her collections matured.

she categorized specimens by order, genus, species, age, and size.

outwardly, the shack was the same.

the weatherboard gray, the roof sagging, the paint on the porch peeling.

inside, though, it was filled with life and light and color, part diorama, part ode to the marsh and its many creatures.

kaya, now 19, was the opposite.

outwardly, she'd changed.

her legs were longer, her eyes larger.

inwardly, though, she felt the same.

she was still the same freakish, wild, ashamed thing who hid when she saw barkley kids on the beaches.

the boys who used to boast about snagging the marsh girl had grown into men, and one of them had never forgotten about kaya.

chase andrews had always been the most popular boy in barkley.

handsome and talented, he'd been the town's brightest star, its best athlete, the quarterback who was always expected to go pro.

but now, he found himself stranded in barkley, with nothing to look forward to but one day taking over the family's automobile repair business.

all that remained were his good looks and his increasingly notorious ability to use them to get his way with women.

which brings us to the day in 1965 when chase saw kaya on one of her rare trips into town.

he tapped her on the shoulder, smiled, and asked her out for a picnic.

why did kaya agree?

physical attraction?

there was more to it than that.

it was chase's ease.

he belonged to the real world.

he was always surrounded by laughing friends.

he had a family.

it was the way he made kaya feel that she might not have to be alone anymore.

anything was better than that loneliness.

they ate the picnic on the beach.

chase played the guitar while kaya looked at shells.

picking one up, she absentmindedly identified it.

pectin ornatis, an ornate scallop.

chase stared at her.

the marsh girl who couldn't spell dog knew the latin names of shells.

it didn't fit with the image of kaya he knew from barkley gossip.

it made him want her more than ever.

chase then took her to a dilapidated fire tower in the forest.

it was a great way to see the marsh, he told her.

he was right.

kaya had never climbed so high.

from the tower, she saw the marsh in its fullness for the first time.

for that, she was really thankful.

she gave chase a necklace she'd made out of rawhide with a shell pendant.

pectin ornatis, the ornate scallop.

the relationship grew until, eventually, they were a couple.

that was what chase said.

he talked about marriage and living together in barkley.

having kids.

kaya asked him to introduce her to his friends.

he always smiled and said yes, but there was always some reason to put it off.

kaya accepted his excuses.

she wanted to believe him.

she wanted to believe him so much that she gave him what he'd wanted all along one night in a run-down motel outside barkley.

and then, in the summer of 1967, kaya opened the local newspaper and saw an engagement notice.

not hers to chase.

no, chase, like all the other barkley boys, was marrying his high school sweetheart.

kaya returned to her solitude, vowing never to speak to chase again.

part 3.

chase's death.

tate didn't stop loving kaya.

he couldn't.

but he couldn't be with her.

it didn't work.

it was kaya or everything else.

that all-or-nothing equation changed when he finished grad school in 66.

a new marine biology research facility was opening near barkley.

tate was a capable young scientist, and he was from the area.

he was a shoo-in for a position at the facility.

maybe it could be kaya and everything else after all.

tate returned to barkley with that thought in his mind.

he apologized and begged for forgiveness.

kaya was in no mood to give it.

but some of their old bond remained.

enough, anyway, to fall in a conversation about a subject they both loved, the marsh.

tate told her about his research, and kaya showed him her collection.

he was amazed.

it was a unique source of insight into a unique ecosystem.

the world had to see it, he said, and he knew exactly who would publish a book about it.

tate kept his word.

in early 1969, kaya found a thick manila envelope in her postbox.

an advanced copy of the seashells of the eastern seaboard slipped into her hands.

enclosed was an advance check for $5,000.

over the coming months, kaya's book would appear in bookstores up and down the coasts of north carolina, south carolina, georgia, and virginia.

the royalty checks, her publisher told her, should give her a steady income for years.

chase still went looking for kaya in the lagoon.

he found her on a beach one afternoon late in the summer of 1969.

he said he was sorry that he hadn't meant to hurt her, that he hadn't wanted to marry this other girl, that his parents had pushed him into it.

all of that meant nothing to kaya now.

she'd changed.

she was at peace.

and it was easy to see now that chase had never had honest intentions when it came to kaya.

but chase wasn't accustomed to hearing no.

two fishermen out on the water saw what happened.

two fishermen out on the water saw what happened next.

chase hit kaya, hard.

she fell to the ground, and then he was on top of her, ripping at her clothes.

she grabbed a rock and slammed it into his head.

he howled.

she pushed him off her and disappeared into the forest, leaving him hollering and cussing on the beach.

there's a certain kind of man who has to have the last word, or the last punch.

kaya knew that kind of man.

her pa had been one of them.

and chase was one, too.

she knew it was only a matter of time before he caught up with her again.

luckily, kaya soon had the chance to get out of town for a few days.

she'd received a note in the mail, an invitation to meet with her new publisher in the city of greenville, about an hour and a half away.

so on october 29, 1969, she stepped onto a bus in downtown barkley and set off.

by the time she got off the return bus two days later, something had changed.

barkley cove was now on edge and stirring with gossip.

a dead body had been found in the marsh.

the dead body of chase andrews.

his body had been discovered earlier that morning, lying stone cold at the bottom of the very same dilapidated fire tower he'd taken kaya to on their first date.

investigators were sure chase was pushed.

it was the absence of footprints, fingerprints, and tire tracks around the tower that made them suspicious.

it suggested that someone had taken care not to leave a trace.

only someone who knew the area could have hidden their tracks like that.

a hunter, maybe, or someone who lived in the marsh.

that was just a hunch.

it was months before they could put together a plausible account of what had happened that night.

they heard about kaya and chase's relationship.

a fisherman told them he'd seen them fighting on a beach.

and even though kaya was supposedly in greenville, two shrimpers said they'd seen kaya's boat heading in the direction of the fire tower at two in the morning on the night of chase's death.

his mother told them that the shell necklace her son always wore wasn't there when she saw his body in the morgue.

chase's friends told them that the marsh girl had given him that necklace.

that was enough for a warrant to search kaya's shack.

there, they discovered the source of the single strand of fiber found at the crime scene, a red cap which tated had given kaya years ago.

bus timetables told them that you can get to greenville from barkland back in a single day if you're minded to.

all that was enough to charge kaya with the murder of chase andrews.

the prosecution's case was compelling.

kaya had the opportunity, means, and motive to kill him.

but the prosecutors couldn't prove beyond reasonable doubt that kaya had used those means and acted on that opportunity.

too many witnesses swore they'd seen her get on that bus to greenville, and no one had seen her return the same night.

the shrimpers, meanwhile, couldn't be sure it really was kaya's boat they'd seen.

it was dark, after all, and most boats in the lagoon look pretty much alike.

so, in 1970, kaya was acquitted.

she was free to return home.

kaya died in 2010 at the age of 64.

she was an acclaimed naturalist, and the greatest authority on the marshlands of the eastern seaboard.

the night of her funeral, her husband of many years, the retired biologist tate walker, began slowly sorting through her possessions.

what he didn't expect to find, though, was a mysterious dust-covered box hidden beneath the floorboards.

as he carefully opened the box, he could hardly believe what he saw.

inside was a necklace with an ornate scalloped shell pendant, and a poem written in kaya's handwriting.

not just any poem, but one practically detailing how chase died that night.

a confession.

they'd both been hidden away for all these years.

knowing what this would mean if found, tate burned the poems and took the shell to a beach near the beach.

tate burned the poems and took the shell to a beach near the couple's home.

he threw it to the ground and watched it disappear among the thousands of other shells forever.

you've just listened to our chapter to where the crawdads sing by delia owens.

since its release in 2018, delia owens' where the crawdads sing has become one of the best-selling books in recent history, selling more than 12 million copies and adapted into a film produced by reese witherspoon.

yet, the book and author haven't gone without controversy.

crawdads has been criticized for perpetuating racial stereotypes, which critics assert depict its african-american characters in a condescending and problematic light.

also, as crawdads is at its heart a murder mystery, it has caused journalists to draw comparisons between the novel and the author's story in real life.

delia owens is also currently wanted for questioning as a witness in zambia for her conservation foundation's role in an anti-poaching mission in 1995 that resulted in the murder of a suspected poacher.

despite the controversy, though, where the crawdads sing has clearly captured reader imagination.

it's a coming-of-age saga, a book about love and betrayal, a murder mystery.

and it appears poised to remain a top-selling work of fiction for years to come.