Where the Crawdads Sing

by Delia Owens

Before the feather game, loneliness had become a natural appendage to Kya, like an arm. Now it grew roots inside her and pressed against her chest.

“I wadn’t aware that words could hold so much. I didn’t know a sentence could be so full.”

She hesitated; touching someone meant giving part of herself away, a piece she never got back.

But these hurried groping hands were only a taking, not a sharing or giving.

Why should the injured, the still bleeding, bear the onus of forgiveness?

Faces change with life’s toll, but eyes remain a window to what was, and she could see him there.

Let’s face it, a lot of times love doesn’t work out. Yet even when it fails, it connects you to others and, in the end, that is all you have, the connections.

A lone tear trailed down Mrs. Culpepper’s cheek, and then a shadow smile for the little swamp truant escaping again.

Tate remembered his dad’s definition of a man: one who can cry freely, feel poetry and opera in his heart, and do whatever it takes to defend a woman.

He knew right away it was the soft breast feather of a female night heron, a long-legged secretive creature who lives deep in the marsh, alone. Yet here it was too near the sea.

When Jodie pulled in a large bream, Kya squealed, “Lookee there. You got one big as Alabamee!” They fried up fish and hush puppies big as “goose aigs.”