Where the Crawdads Sing

by Delia Owens

Marsh is not swamp. Marsh is a space of light, where grass grows in water, and water flows into the sky.

Then within the marsh, here and there, true swamp crawls into low-lying bogs, hidden in clammy forests. Swamp water is still and dark, having swallowed the light in its muddy throat.

The scattered marsh holdings weren’t legally described, just staked out natural—a creek boundary here, a dead oak there—by renegades.

Kya didn’t stop or they would bolt, a lesson she’d learned from watching wild turkeys: if you act like a predator, they act like prey.

if you look tempting, men turn into predators.

His dad had told him many times that the definition of a real man is one who cries without shame, reads poetry with his heart, feels opera in his soul, and does what’s necessary to defend a woman.

Tate's father

Tate found a poem by Thomas Moore: . . . she’s gone to the Lake of the Dismal Swamp, Where, all night long, by a fire-fly lamp, She paddles her white canoe. And her fire-fly lamp I soon shall see, And her paddle I soon shall hear; Long and loving our life shall be, And I’ll hide the maid in a cypress tree, When the footstep of death is near.

Sand keeps secrets better than mud.

She had watched male birds wooing females by bringing them gifts. But she was pretty young for nesting.

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

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

“What d’ya mean, where the crawdads sing? Ma used to say that.” Kya remembered Ma always encouraging her to explore the marsh: “Go as far as you can—way out yonder where the crawdads sing.” “Just means far in the bush where critters are wild, still behaving like critters. Now, you got any ideas where we can meet?”

All her life, she’d seen these marvels at eye level, so nature’s ways came easily to her.

Within all the worlds of biology, she searched for an explanation of why a mother would leave her offspring.

Ya lie down with dogs, ya get up with fleas.

“That’s what nobody understands about me.” She raised her voice, “I never hated people. They hated me. They laughed at me. They left me. They harassed me. They attacked me. Well, it’s true; I learned to live without them. Without you. Without Ma! Or anybody!”

To her brother, Jodie

With no tears or censure, Kya whispered, “Good-bye, Ma.”

She knew the years of isolation had altered her behavior until she was different from others, but it wasn’t her fault she’d been alone. Most of what she knew, she’d learned from the wild. Nature had nurtured, tutored, and protected her when no one else would. If consequences resulted from her behaving differently, then they too were functions of life’s fundamental core.