Book Report: Where the Crawdads Sing

45. Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing (2018) (1/19/19)

This is a lovely book, a first novel by an established nonfiction writer from way back: I'm thinking of Cry of the Kalahari (1984), though she has written other natural history works as well.

I will always remember driving in a jeep through the Kalahari and our guide pointing to a lone acacia tree, saying, "That's where the Owenses had their camp for seven years." I am still a little in awe and envy of Delia's intrepidness and of her life as a field biologist.

This book, too, contains a lot of biology: the natural history of swamps and marshes, and of the seashore; the life cycles and mating rituals of numerous beasts, from fireflies to black-headed gulls to white-tail deer. The descriptive passages are poetic yet honed to the essential details.

The story, all in all, requires considerable suspension of disbelief, but the writing was inviting enough. It tells of a girl, Kya, who lives in a wild marshland with her family—all of whom, one by one, end up leaving her, until she is all alone by age ten. She has spent exactly one day in school by then, and never goes back, shamed by the children's taunting. But she does learn how to read, thanks to a boy from the nearby small town, Tate (her first "primer" is Aldo Leopold's Sand County Almanac). And she is able to provide for herself by trading harvested mussels and smoked fish with the black man, Jumpin', who owns the shoreside gas station just up the coast. Schooling herself with the books that Tate continues to bring over the years, she studies the heart of her beloved marshland, eventually publishing books of her paintings and observations. (Do you see why I said a suspension of disbelief is needed? I imagine the impatient cynic would just say, "Balderdash," and throw the book at the wall. I guess I was in the mood for some schlock.)

The book opens, though, with a death: a young man has fallen from a watchtower. The story then switches back and forth between Kya's ongoing tale, starting in 1952 when she is six, and then returning at intervals to the investigation of the death—which becomes a murder investigation, with Kya the only real suspect—in 1969. It's a reasonably clever structure and works to keep the reader's interest.

It is, in the end, part coming-of-age story, part love story, part murder mystery, part courtroom drama, part natural history lesson. Here's a snatch of the marsh, randomly selected:

A great blue heron is the color of gray mist reflecting in blue water. And like mist, she can fade into the backdrop, all of her disappearing except the concentric circles of her lock-and-load eyes. She is a patient, solitary hunter, standing alone as long as it takes to snatch her prey. Or, eyeing her catch, she will stride forward one slow step at a time, like a predacious bridesmaid. And yet, on rare occasions she hunts on the wing, darting and diving sharply, swordlike beak in the lead. 

Despite the often lyric writing, one rather prosaic paragraph in particular leapt out at me:

She handed Mrs. Hines, the librarian, a list of college textbooks. "Could you please help me find The Principles of Organic Chemistry by Geissman, Invertebrate Zoology of the Coastal Marsh by Jones, and Fundamentals of Ecology by Odum . . ." She'd seen these titles referenced in the last of the books Tate had given [her] before he left her for college.

It was quite a surprise to see my father's textbook referenced! I expect it's one that Owens herself studied (and perhaps suffered) from when she was in college. And yes, it made me enjoy the book that little smidgen bit more.