Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

From Goodreads

For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet fishing village. Kya Clark is barefoot and wild; unfit for polite society. So in late 1969, when the popular Chase Andrews is found dead, locals immediately suspect her.

But Kya is not what they say. A born naturalist with just one day of school, she takes life's lessons from the land, learning the real ways of the world from the dishonest signals of fireflies. But while she has the skills to live in solitude forever, the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. Drawn to two young men from town, who are each intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new and startling world—until the unthinkable happens.

In Where the Crawdads Sing, Owens juxtaposes an exquisite ode to the natural world against a profound coming of age story and haunting mystery. Thought-provoking, wise, and deeply moving, Owens’s debut novel reminds us that we are forever shaped by the child within us, while also subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.

The story asks how isolation influences the behavior of a young woman, who like all of us, has the genetic propensity to belong to a group. The clues to the mystery are brushed into the lush habitat and natural histories of its wild creatures.

My thoughts

This was a local Reading Group read, it's a book that I had heard about but never been drawn to for one reason or another.  The whole point of reading groups is to make you read books that you may normally not have chosen.

This book took some getting into for any number of reasons, but once I did get into it I was hooked and my head was second guessing what was actually happening.  I think the fact that it was told from multiple POVs and jumped around in time didn't help, this doesn't normally bother me but for some reason I found it hard keeping track with this one early on and found that it helped to read it in larger chunks.

Telling the story of Kya Clark, known by many as the 'Marsh Girl' due to the nature of the way she lived.  When Kya is suspected and accused of killing Chase Andrews due to her solitary and unusual way of life, it's not known whether or not she is actually capable of committing such a crime or whether it's down to the fear that the locals have of her that's causing her to be a prime suspect.

This is a story that shows how society can show bias towards people that they are unsure of and do not understand.  It shows us how isolation can not always be a good thing and that as a race, we humans benefit from the interactions that we have others (most of the time).  The author portrayed the countryside and environment that the story took place in well, making you almost feel as if you were there with the characters experiencing all that the area had to offer them.