Where the crawdads sing, by Delia Owens

Hard to put my finger on whether I liked this very popular recent novel or not.  The author’s past writings have been scientific – she is a zoologist with a PhD in Animal Behavior – and this is her first work of fiction.  Set on the coast of North Carolina during the middle of the last century (it effectively ends in 1970), the story revolves around Kya, or the Marsh Girl, as she is known to the townspeople in the tiny fishing village of Barkley Cove.  When she is seven, her abused mother leaves the shack in the marshy countryside that her alcoholic and violent husband has brought her to after running through his money and chances in New Orleans where they met.  Soon her older brothers and sisters also wander off, and finally Jodie, the brother who, at 12, is closest to her in age, also leaves.  For a time, her father treats his remaining child kindly, but eventually he also succumbs to his demons and leaves.  At ten, she is left to her own devices with no money, no education, and no family.  Kept alive by her knowledge of the marsh, a kindly black owner of a boating supply store, and luck, Kya grows up a mystery to her neighbors.  When Tate, a boy a few years older, offers to teach her to read, she proves to be an able student – eventually she is devouring scholarly tomes and is studying, painting, and describing the life of the marsh around her.  But there is trouble in paradise when the innocent teenager is seduced and abandoned by the town’s bright star and quarterback, Chase, who will turn up dead years later with Kya the prime suspect.  There is a bit of a YA sensibility about the book, and the premise of Kya’s survival alone and her becoming a self-taught scholar and noted author at twenty are hard to believe.  But the author  shines in her loving descriptions of the flora and fauna of the marsh, estuary, and ocean.  Hmmmm…..maybe stick to science writing?  368 pp.