More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
“I’ve read a lot about this since. In nature—out yonder where the crawdads sing—these
these ruthless-seeming behaviors actually increase the mother’s number of young over her lifetime, and thus her genes for abandoning offspring in times of stress are passed on to the next generation. And on and on. It happens in humans, too. Some behaviors that seem harsh to us now ensured the survival of early man in whatever swamp he was in at the time. Without them, we wouldn’t be here. We still store those instincts in our genes, and they express themselves when certain circumstances prevail. Some parts of us will always be what we were, what we had to be to survive—way back yonder.
“Maybe some primitive urge—some ancient genes, not appropriate anymore—drove Ma to leave us because of the stress, the horror and real danger of living with Pa. That doesn’t make it right; she should have chosen to stay. But knowing that these tendencies are in ...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
That may explain her leaving, but I still don’t see why sh...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
“I’ve had no family, no news of family for most of my life. Now within a few minutes I’ve found a brother and lost my mother.”
“Jumpin’ has been my best friend, for years my only friend. My only family unless you count herring gulls.”
Even in nature, parenthood is a thinner line than one might think.
SHE COOKED A SOUTHERN SUPPER as Ma would have: black-eyed peas with red onions, fried ham, cornbread with cracklin’, butter beans cooked in butter and milk. Blackberry cobbler with hard cream with some bourbon Jodie brought. As they ate, he told her he would like to stay a few days, if that was okay, and she said he was welcome as long as he liked. “This is your land now, Kya.
Kya, if you love Tate, take a chance.” Kya thought of Ma’s painting of Tate and herself as children, their heads close together, surrounded by pastel flowers and butterflies. Maybe a message from Ma after all.
she could see his red pickup through the holes of the forest where a white scarf had once trailed away, his long arm waving until he was gone.
1969
1969
July afternoon in 1969, more than seven months after Jodie’s visit, The Eastern Seacoast Birds by Catherine Danielle Clark—her second book, a volume of stark detail and beauty—appeared in her mailbox.
Kya read the words Dearest and Love again. Tate. The golden-haired boy in the boat, guiding her home before a storm, gifting her feathers on a weathered stump, teaching her to read; the tender teenager steering her through her first cycle as a woman and arousing her first sexual desires as a female; the young scientist encouraging her to publish her books.
1969
ON DECEMBER 15, as Ed and Joe discussed options of how to bring Kya in, someone knocked on the door. The large form of a man loomed behind the frosted glass.
1969
1970
It was 9:30 A.M. on February 25, 1970.
the death penalty.
though not marked, everybody understood colored people were restricted to the balcony.
Sunday Justice,
the courthouse cat—his back black, his face white with a black mask around green eyes—stretched out in a puddle of sunlight in one of the deep windowsills.
Barkley Cove remained the official hub for county government.
1969
1970
1969
Just at that moment she noticed a female praying mantis stalking along a branch near her face. The insect was plucking moths with her articulated forelegs, then chewing them up, their wings still flapping in her mouth. A male mantis, head high and proud as a pony, paraded along to court her. She appeared interested, her antennae flailing about like wands. His embrace might have been tight or tender, Kya couldn’t tell, but while he probed about with his copulatory organ to fertilize her eggs, the female turned back her long, elegant neck and bit off his head.
He was so busy humping, he didn’t notice. His neck stump waved about as he continued his business, and she nibbled on his thorax, and then his wings. Finally, his last foreleg protruded from her mouth as his headless, heartless lower body copulated in perfect rhyme.
Female fireflies draw in strange males with dishonest signals and eat them; mantis females devour their own mates. Female insects, Kya thoug...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
1970
Being dead didn’t bother her; they couldn’t scare her with threats of ending this shadow life. But the process of being killed by another’s hand, planned out and set to schedule, was so unthinkable it stopped her breath.
1969
Who decides the time to die?
1970
the package from Jumpin’—unwrapped
Mabel’s corn muffins.
A loud purr erupted like a current. She closed her eyes at such easy acceptance.
A deep pause in a lifetime of longing.
He jumped on her bed, and a sweet sleep wrapped them together.
1970
1969
“Was it Mr. Chase done this to ya? Ya know ya can tell me. In fact, we gwine stand right here tills ya tell me.”
“Yes, it was Chase.” Kya could barely believe the words came from her mouth. She never thought she had anyone to tell such things. She turned away again, fighting tears.
Jumpin’s entire face frowned. He didn’t speak for several seconds. And the...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
“Nothing, I swear. He tried, Jumpin’, but I f...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
1970
1969
1970
1970
