Where the Crawdads Sing

Produktdetails

Verlag

Penguin LLC US

Erschienen

2021

Sprache

English

Seiten

400

Infos

400 Seiten
207 mm x 136 mm

ISBN

978-0-7352-1910-6

Besprechung

A painfully beautiful first novel that is at once a murder mystery, a coming-of-age narrative and a celebration of nature....Owens here surveys the desolate marshlands of the North Carolina coast through the eyes of an abandoned child. And in her isolation that child makes us open our own eyes to the secret wonders and dangers of her private world. The New York Times Book Review

Steeped in the rhythms and shadows of the coastal marshes of North Carolina s Outer Banks, this fierce and hauntingly beautiful novel centers on...Kya s heartbreaking story of learning to trust human connections, intertwine[d] with a gripping murder mystery, revealing savage truths. An astonishing debut. People

This lush mystery is perfect for fans of Barbara Kingsolver. Bustle

A lush debut novel, Owens delivers her mystery wrapped in gorgeous, lyrical prose. It s clear she s from this place the land of the southern coasts, but also the emotional terrain you can feel it in the pages.  A magnificent achievement, ambitious, credible and very timely. Alexandra Fuller, New York Times bestselling author of Don t Let s Go to the Dogs Tonight

Heart-wrenching...A fresh exploration of isolation and nature from a female perspective along with a compelling love story. Entertainment Weekly

This wonderful novel has a bit of everything mystery, romance, and fascinating characters, all told in a story that takes place in North Carolina. Nicholas Sparks, New York Times bestselling author of Every Breath

Delia Owen s gorgeous novel is both a coming-of-age tale and an engrossing whodunit. Real Simple

Evocative...Kya makes for an unforgettable heroine. Publishers Weekly

The New Southern novel...A lyrical debut. Southern Living

A nature-infused romance with a killer twist. Refinery29

Anyone who liked The Great Alone will want to read Where the Crawdads Sing....This astonishing debut is a beautiful and haunting novel that packs a powerful punch. It s the first novel in a long time that made me cry. Kristin Hannah, author of The Great Alone and The Nightingale

Both a coming-of-age story and a mysterious account of a murder investigation told from the perspective of a young girl...Through Kya s story, Owens explores how isolation affects human behavior, and the deep effect that rejection can have on our lives. Vanity Fair

Lyrical...Its appeal ris[es] from Kya s deep connection to the place where makes her home, and to all of its creatures. Booklist

This beautiful, evocative novel is likely to stay with you for many days afterward....absorbing. AARP 

This haunting tale captivates every bit as much for its crime drama elements as for the humanity at its core. Mystery & Suspense Magazine

Compelling, original...A mystery, a courtroom drama, a romance and a coming-of-age story, Where the Crawdads Sing is a moving, beautiful tale. Readers will remember Kya for a long, long time. ShelfAwareness

With prose luminous as a low-country moon, Owens weaves a compelling tale of a forgotten girl in the unforgiving coastal marshes of North Carolina. It is a murder mystery/love story/courtroom drama that readers will love, but the novel delves so much deeper into the bone and sinew of our very nature, asking often unanswerable questions, old and intractable as the marsh itself. A stunning debut! Christopher Scotton, author of The Secret Wisdom of the Earth

A compelling mystery with prose so luminous it can cut through the murkiest of pluff mud. Augusta Chronicle

Carries the rhythm of an old time ballad. It is clear Owens knows this land intimately, from the black mud sucking at footsteps to the taste of saltwater and the cry of seagulls. David Joy, author of The Line That Held Us

Textauszug

1.

Ma

1952

The morning burned so August-hot, the marsh's moist breath hung the oaks and pines with fog. The palmetto patches stood unusually quiet except for the low, slow flap of the heron's wings lifting from the lagoon. And then, Kya, only six at the time, heard the screen door slap. Standing on the stool, she stopped scrubbing grits from the pot and lowered it into the basin of worn-out suds. No sounds now but her own breathing. Who had left the shack? Not Ma. She never let the door slam.

But when Kya ran to the porch, she saw her mother in a long brown skirt, kick pleats nipping at her ankles, as she walked down the sandy lane in high heels. The stubby-nosed shoes were fake alligator skin. Her only going-out pair. Kya wanted to holler out but knew not to rouse Pa, so opened the door and stood on the brick-'n'-board steps. From there she saw the blue train case Ma carried. Usually, with the confidence of a pup, Kya knew her mother would return with meat wrapped in greasy brown paper or with a chicken, head dangling down. But she never wore the gator heels, never took a case.

Ma always looked back where the foot lane met the road, one arm held high, white palm waving, as she turned onto the track, which wove through bog forests, cattail lagoons, and maybe-if the tide obliged-eventually into town. But today she walked on, unsteady in the ruts. Her tall figure emerged now and then through the holes of the forest until only swatches of white scarf flashed between the leaves. Kya sprinted to the spot she knew would bare the road; surely Ma would wave from there, but she arrived only in time to glimpse the blue case-the color so wrong for the woods-as it disappeared. A heaviness, thick as black-cotton mud, pushed her chest as she returned to the steps to wait.

Kya was the youngest of five, the others much older, though later she couldn't recall their ages. They lived with Ma and Pa, squeezed together like penned rabbits, in the rough-cut shack, its screened porch staring big-eyed from under the oaks.

Jodie, the brother closest to Kya, but still seven years older, stepped from the house and stood behind her. He had her same dark eyes and black hair; had taught her birdsongs, star names, how to steer the boat through saw grass.

"Ma'll be back," he said.

"I dunno. She's wearin' her gator shoes."

"A ma don't leave her kids. It ain't in 'em."

"You told me that fox left her babies."

"Yeah, but that vixen got 'er leg all tore up. She'd've starved to death if she'd tried to feed herself 'n' her kits. She was better off to leave 'em, heal herself up, then whelp more when she could raise 'em good. Ma ain't starvin', she'll be back." Jodie wasn't nearly as sure as he sounded, but said it for Kya.

Her throat tight, she whispered, "But Ma's carryin' that blue case like she's goin' somewheres big."

The shack sat back from the palmettos, which sprawled across sand flats to a necklace of green lagoons and, in the distance, all the marsh beyond. Miles of blade-grass so tough it grew in salt water, interrupted only by trees so bent they wore the shape of the wind. Oak forests bunched around the other sides of the shack and sheltered the closest lagoon, its surface so rich in life it churned. Salt air and gull-song drifted through the trees from the sea.

Claiming territory hadn't changed much since the 1500s. The scattered marsh holdings weren't legally described, just staked out natural-a creek boundary here, a dead oak there-by renegades. A man doesn't set up a palmetto lean-to in a bog unless he's on the run from somebody or at the end of his own road.

The marsh was guarded by a torn shoreline, labeled by early explorers as the "Graveyard of the Atlantic" because riptides, furious winds, and shallow shoals wrecked ships like paper hats along what would become the North Carolina coast. One seaman's journal read, "rang'd along the Shoar

Langtext

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE The #1 New York Times bestselling worldwide sensation with more than 18 million copies sold, hailed by The New York Times Book Review as a painfully beautiful first novel that is at once a murder mystery, a coming-of-age narrative and a celebration of nature.

For years, rumors of the Marsh Girl have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life until the unthinkable happens.

Where the Crawdads Sing is at once an exquisite ode to the natural world, a heartbreaking coming-of-age story, and a surprising tale of possible murder. Owens reminds us that we are forever shaped by the children we once were, and that we are all subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.

Über den AutorIn

Delia Owens is the coauthor of three internationally bestselling nonfiction books about her life as a wildlife scientist in Africa. She holds a BS in Zoology from the University of Georgia and a PhD in Animal Behavior from the University of California at Davis. 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 lives in the mountains of North Carolina. Where the Crawdads Sing is her first novel.