Where the Crawdads Sing

by Delia Owens

When cornered, desperate, or isolated, man reverts to those instincts that aim straight at survival. Quick and just.

He had two settings: silence and shouting.

She knew Pa was the reason they all left; what she wondered was why no one took her with them.

imagination grows in the loneliest of soils,

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.

Barkley Cove served its religion hard-boiled and deep-fried.

Ma had said women need one another more than they need men, but she never told her how to get inside the pride.

Slowly, she unraveled each word of the sentence: “‘There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot.’” “Oh,” she said. “Oh.” “You can read, Kya. There will never be a time again when you can’t read.” “It ain’t just that.” She spoke almost in a whisper. “I wadn’t aware that words could hold so much. I didn’t know a sentence could be so full.” He smiled. “That’s a very good sentence. Not all words hold that much.”

“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.

Autumn leaves don’t fall; they fly. They take their time and wander on this, their only chance to soar.

While she pleaded for him not to cut through her name, he sliced enormous pieces of cake and plopped them on paper plates. Staring into each other’s eyes, they broke off bites and stuffed them in their mouths. Smacking loudly. Licking fingers. Laughing through icing-smeared grins. Eating cake the way it should be eaten, the way everybody wants to eat it.

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

She never collected lightning bugs in bottles; you learn a lot more about something when it’s not in a jar.

Biology sees right and wrong as the same color in different light.

Needing people ended in hurt.

The lonely became larger than she could hold. She wished for someone’s voice, presence, touch, but wished more to protect her heart.

Life had made her an expert at mashing feelings into a storable size.

. . . all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying, And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

Trapped inside, Love is a caged beast, Eating its own flesh. Love must be free to wander, To land upon its chosen shore And breathe.

How much do you trade to defeat lonesomeness?

After Chase unlocked their door, she stepped into a room that seemed clean enough but reeked of Pine-Sol and was furnished in America cheap: fake-panel walls, sagging bed with a nickel vibrator machine, and a black-and-white TV secured to the table with an impossibly large chain and padlock. The bedspreads were lime green, the carpet orange shag. Kya’s mind went back to all the places they had lain together—in crystal sand by tidal pools, in moonlit drifting boats. Here, the bed loomed as the centerpiece, but the room didn’t look like love.

As always, the ocean seemed angrier than the marsh. Deeper, it had more to say.

“I guess some things can’t be explained, only forgiven or not.

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.

it wasn’t so much that the herd would be incomplete without one of its deer, but that each deer would be incomplete without her herd.

a gift shop that sold everything the villagers didn’t need but every tourist had to have.