Where the Crawdads Sing is a 2018 coming-of-age murder mystery novel by American author Delia Owens. The story follows two timelines that slowly intertwine. The first timeline describes the life and adventures of a young girl named Kya as she grows up isolated in the marshes of North Carolina. The second timeline follows an investigation into the apparent murder of Chase Andrews, a local celebrity of Barkley Cove, a fictional coastal town of North Carolina. By July 2022, the book had sold over 15 million copies. A film adaptation was released in July 2022. In 1952, six-year-old Catherine Danielle Clark (nicknamed "Kya") watches her mother abandon her and her family due to violent abuse from her husband, Kya's father Paul. While Kya waits in vain for her mother's return, she witnesses her older siblings, Missy, Murph, Mandy, and Jodie, all leave as well, due to their father's drinking and physical abuse. Alone with her father — who temporarily stops drinking — Kya learns to fish. Her father gives her his knapsack to hold her collections of shells and feathers. The illiterate Kya paints these shells and feathers, as well as the marsh's creatures and shorelines, with watercolors her mother left behind. One day, Kya finds a letter in the mailbox. She recognizes it as having been sent from her mother, and she leaves it on the table for her father to find. When he reads the letter, he becomes infuriated and burns the letter along with most of her mother's wardrobe and canvases. He returns to drinking and takes long, frequent trips away to gamble. Eventually, he does not return at all, and Kya assumes he is dead, making him the last of the family to leave her alone in the marsh. Without money and family, she survives by gardening and trading fresh mussels and smoked fish for money and gas from Jumpin', a black man who owns a gasoline station at the boat dock. Jumpin' and his wife Mabel become lifelong friends to Kya, and Mabel collects donated clothing for her. As Kya grows up, she faces prejudice from the townspeople of Barkley Cove, NC, who nickname her "The Marsh Girl". She is laughed at by the schoolchildren the only day she goes to school and is called "nasty" and "filthy" by the pastor's wife. However, she becomes friendly with Tate Walker, an old friend of Jodie's who sometimes fishes in the marsh. When Kya loses her bearings one day, Tate leads her home in his boat. Years later, he leaves her feathers from rare birds, then teaches her how to read and write. The two form a romantic relationship until Tate leaves for college at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He promises to return, yet later realizes Kya cannot live in his more civilized world because of how wild and independent she is, and leaves her without saying goodbye. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.