Where the Crawdads Sing

by Delia Owens

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. Look at us; you and I have each other now, and just think, if I have kids and you have kids, well, that’s a whole new string of connections. And on it goes. Kya, if you love Tate, take a chance.”

Now, low clouds scudded just above a sloshing sea, and to the east, a squall—twisted tightly like a whip—threatened from the horizon.

The sea no longer swelled in symmetrical waves but tossed in confusion. The water grew meaner as the edge of the storm engulfed her.

Moss-draped trees hugged the bank, and their low-hanging limbs formed a cave close to the shore through which she glided, searching the thickets for small orange mushrooms on slender stalks.

Her eye was still puffed around a thin slit, and the bruise had leached its nauseated colors across half her face. Much of her body throbbed with pain.

She stared at dust motes, dancing silently in one direction as though following some dreamy leader. When they hit the shadows, they vanished. Without the sun they were nothing.

Whitecaps slapped and spat, and pelicans, heads turning for fish, flew low over the waves.

Sleep avoided her, slinking around the edges, then darting away. Her mind would plunge along deep walls of sudden slumber—an instant of bliss—then her body would shudder her awake.

Kya nodded at him and then looked out the window, where an enormous cumulus cloud with peach-colored cheeks puffed itself up.

Dominance hierarchies enhance stability in natural populations, and some less natural,

TUTORED BY MILLIONS OF MINUTES ALONE, Kya thought she knew lonely. A life of staring at the old kitchen table, into empty bedrooms, across endless stretches of sea and grass. No one to share the joy of a found feather or a finished watercolor. Reciting poetry to gulls.

Most of what she knew, she’d learned from the wild. Nature had nurtured, tutored, and protected her when no one else would.

For Kya, it was enough to be part of this natural sequence as sure as the tides. She was bonded to her planet and its life in a way few people are. Rooted solid in this earth. Born of this mother.