WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING by Delia Owens

4 out of 5 stars

On Amazon (universal link)
On Goodreads

How I discovered this book: Many book blogs!

In a Nutshell: Girl grows up alone in the marshland of North Carolina, in the 1950s and 60s.

I'm several years late to the party with this novel, but it finally got plucked from my TBR list (Amazon tells me I actually bought it three years ago!).  For anyone who hasn't read it, it's about a girl called Kya who grows up alone in the marshland of North Carolina, in the 1950s and 1960s.  When she is six her mother leaves, soon to be followed by her brothers and sisters and finally her drunken, abusive father.  The story is about how she survives and how these years affect the events of her early adulthood; it paints a vivid picture of life in this forgotten backwater in the mid 20th Century, and shows how the changing attitudes of elsewhere in the country had yet to touch it.  Kya's love of and connection with the marshland shines through; she is part of it.

Running through her story are chapters from 1969, when a body is discovered.  Was Chase Andrews murdered?  If so, by whom?  Eventually, the two timelines meet up.

This is not a book to be read from today's viewpoint; the world was much larger in those days and it was easy for people to simply disappear, to evade authority, to lose touch with someone completely.  Neither should Kya's survival be judged by the way in which today's children behave; she was taught how to live off the land from a young age, to do basic chores and be resilient.  Then there is the fact that she was left alone with her abusive father by the brother who supposedly loved her; I don't think one can ever say that a character would or wouldn't behave a certain way.  Human beings do all sorts of inexplicable stuff.

There were a couple of aspects that seemed a little far-fetched (such as her learning to read in about two days, the ease with which her shack on the marshes was connected to mains water and electricity supplies), and there were some loose ends that I expected to be tied up, but on the whole I enjoyed the book very much.  It's one of those that depends on how much you are willing to suspend your disbelief, I think.