

This article is an excerpt from the Shortform summary of "Where the Crawdads Sing" by Delia Owens. Shortform has the world's best summaries of books you should be reading.
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Where is Barkley Cove? What is Barkley Cove like in Where the Crawdads Sing?
Barkley Cove is the town and setting for the book Where the Crawdads Sing. Though the marsh where Kya lives is actually outside of town, the town still plays an important role in the story.
The setting of Barkley Cove shows the separation between Kya and the townspeople, and the prejudice she faces as a “Marsh Girl.”
Marsh Girl: The Outsider of Barkley Cove
Kya’s family home was a shack on a large plot of land a few miles outside the main town of Barkley Cove. The land was surrounded by palmettos, lagoons and channels that curled like gnarled fingers through the marsh, a forest of oak trees on one side, and the Atlantic ocean on the other.
The Little Woman
The only income the family had was Pa’s disability checks from the Army. He took most of the money for himself, but he gave Kya a dollar and some change to buy food in exchange for her taking on the role of woman-of-the-house: cleaning, doing the laundry, stockpiling wood for the stove, and cooking all the meals.
For the first time in her life, Kya walked the four miles to Barkley Cove. The town was small and surrounded by everglades. Along the waterfront was Main Street, which held a handful of shops, such as the Piggly Wiggly, a Western Auto parts store, a diner, a bakery, and the Dog-Gone beer hall. All the buildings were weathered from years of salt spray and wind off the ocean.
Barefoot and awkward in overalls too small for her long frame, Kya nervously entered town. The town folk carried low opinions of the marsh dwellers, and she was afraid of people seeing her. She also didn’t know how to count past twenty-nine, and figuring the change for the groceries felt scarier than talking to strangers.
When she arrived on Main Street, three boys nearly ran her over on their bikes. A local fabric store owner, Miss Pansy Price, scolded the boys after they nearly ran into her, too, and Kya heard her call one of them Chase Andrews and refer to Kya as swamp trash. Kya recognized Chase as the son of the family who owned Western Auto.
After the boys left, Kya scurried inside the Piggly Wiggly. She grabbed a bag of grits and took it to the counter. When Mrs. Singletary—the soft and sympathetic clerk—counted out change into her tiny hand, Kya was stunned to still have money. She took the bag and ran all the way home.
Life in Barkley Cove
Winter became spring, and spring grew into summer. It was 1953, and Pa and Kya had settled into their new life together. They ate meals at the table, talked, and sometimes played gin rummy after dinner.
Pa started to take her places, too. On one occasion, he took her to Jumpin’s Gas and Bait, a filling station and fishing shop that sat along the shore between the marsh and Barkley Cove. The shop was a shack on a floating wharf held in place by a cable tied around a tree. Jumpin’ was an old black man with gray hair. He lived in Colored Town, a small Black community located outside of town. He was kind to Kya, as he was with everyone who came to fill up their boats.
On another night, Pa took Kya into town for supper at the local diner. Kya had never been to a restaurant before. Before they went inside, she tried to clean the mud off her dingy clothes and smooth her wild black mane down. Pa ignored the snide looks and comments from the other patrons and ordered them a feast for dinner, including blackberry cobbler for dessert.
Kya waited outside the diner while Pa paid the bill. A small voice said hello, and she turned to find a four-year-old girl in a snazzy dress and blonde ringlets holding her small hand out. Kya was afraid to touch the little girl because of how clean she was, but she extended her hand anyway. Before they could shake, however, Teresa White, the preacher’s wife, burst from a store and shooed Kya away. Mrs. White warned her little daughter not to go near the Marsh Girl because she was dirty. Kya didn’t have time to be offended, preoccupied as she was watching a mother show love to her child.

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Here's what you'll find in our full Where the Crawdads Sing summary :
- How Kya Clark's abandonment as a child affected her through her entire life
- How Kya discovered love despite steep obstacles
- The murder trial that embroiled Kya's town, and the ultimate truth behind the murder