Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens #deliaowens #gpputnamssons #thesouth #northcarolina #prejudice #mystery #love @absltmom

I, want to add words of praise for this book. It was masterful, exceptional, an outstanding tribute to the environment of North Carolina’s coastline, of small town Southern living, of a people who lived, loved, and were products of their time.If you want to read a first rate novel just look to ….I, want to add words of praise for this book. It was masterful, exceptional, an outstanding tribute to the environment of North Carolina’s coastline, of small town Southern living, of a people who lived, loved, and were products of their time.If you want to read a first rate novel just look to ….Where the Crawdads Sing

In this novel, we meet so many characters that resonant with the songs of their upbringing, who fall to the lure of money, power, and the ways of what their insular world has decided. They harbor prejudice, animosity, and enmity for those who they consider below them.

Delia Owens, our author in her inaugural novel, makes you one with the story. She assembles a group of characters ranging from the Marsh Girl, Kya Clark, a girl of mystery, forced to live on her own when her siblings, mother and eventually her cruel and callous father leave her, to the wonderful Tate who becomes her friend, her mentor, and the man she will some day love. Alas, though Tate also leaves her as she becomes a dupe for the unscrupulous Chase. There are the loving characters of Jumpin and Mabel, who look out for Kya with a quiet heart, with their loving manner propelling the story forward and portraying the beauty of caring for others. Conversely, Ms Owens, presents with a troop of hardhearted and callous folks who populate the town and feel that Kya is dirty, contaminated, and squalid.

While reading this amazing story, I could not help but think of how some authors are just so good, the gift of story telling, seeming to be embedded into their very nature, a kind of extra gene in their DNA. Hard to imagine that this was the first book by this author, it as that outstanding. This author was in total control of all that is written, felt, and needed to make her book a spectacular achievement. Sure hoping there will be more.

I think what struck me the most was her ability not only to make that environment so real, so much so that it became a character in and of itself. Her characters were part and parcel of what that environment was. They, to me, were the environment and the environment was them.

There was really nothing that I would say was wrong with this book. It presented us with flawed characters and a story line that touched all of us. It was a story of loneliness, of love, of finding one’s place in the world, even if that was a place where few dwelt.

I was surprised by the ending, but did love it. In its conclusion, everyone got what they deserved, be it that touch of human love, of human kindness, and of human retribution. In my opinion, this novel was brilliant, a definite 5 star book for me.

“I wadn’t aware that words could hold so much. I didn’t know a sentence could be so full.” Certainly we became aware of what words can hold thanks to Ms Owens outstanding book!

Thank you to my local library for purchasing this book as well as a big thanks for the Traveling Sisters who read this amazing book with me.

  Delia Owens is the co-author of three internationally bestselling nonfiction books about her life as a wildlife scientist in Africa—Cry of the Kalahari, The Eye of the Elephant, and Secrets of the Savanna. She has won the John Burroughs Award for Nature Writing and has been published in Nature, The African Journal of Ecology, and International Wildlife, among many others. She currently lives in Idaho, where she continues her support for the people and wildlife of Zambia. Where the Crawdads Sing is her first novel.