PDF Summary:Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens

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Moving On

That night, Kya couldn’t stop thinking about mornings with Ma, when she’d wake up to the smell of frying fatback, grits on the stove, and biscuits baking in the wood oven. On those mornings, she would hug Kya and call her a special girl. Ma would sing folk songs or nursery rhymes, or the two would clasp hands and dance around the kitchen.

Kya should have known something was off that morning. Ma had been silent when she made breakfast. She didn’t smile, and her vacant eyes were bloodshot. A discolored bruise had formed across her forehead. The breakfast dishes still sat in the sink. Ma had left without washing up.

Kya took up her watchpost on the porch the next morning and the morning after that. Jodie tried to cheer her up with a make-believe games about explorers. His distraction worked for a while, but Kya’s thoughts turned back to Ma. All she wanted to do was wait for Ma to come around the bend. She didn’t cry. She was stoic, staring at the empty lane.

In just a few weeks, Pa would drive each of Kya’s teenage siblings away. His drunken rages turned into violent assaults, and each child—Missy, Murph, and Mandy (as Kya, later in life, would...

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Despite her gut-wrenching hunger, Kya was too nervous to eat, so she drank the milk and shoved the rest of the pie in the carton. She kept her mouth shut the rest of the day, not wanting to give the other kids more ammunition to make fun of her, but it didn’t matter. After school, as the bus drove down the ruddy road to the marsh, the kids, including the girls from lunch (who she named Tallskinnyblonde and Roundchubbycheeks), teased Kya, calling her swamp rat.

Kya ran the three miles from the bus stop to the shack and went straight to the beach. With tears streaming down her face, she fed the swirling and diving birds the chicken pie from lunch. The birds were her only friends, and she wished she could stay with them forever.

Mrs. Culpepper was back at the shack two days later searching for Kya. This time, Kya created decoy tracks in the mud and stayed out of sight. Every few days or so, the car would bound down the lane, and the search for Kya would ensue. But after a few weeks, Mrs. Culpepper stopped coming. Kya never went back to school.

Learning the Ropes

Weeks then months passed, and each morning, Kya still woke hoping to find Ma making breakfast. Pa stayed...

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When Kya got back home, she felt grown up. She’d made money and replenished what she needed to survive on her own. She unpacked the groceries and noticed a box of candy in the bag. Jumpin' must have slipped it in.

Kya started waking up earlier each day to collect mussels and oysters. Sometimes, she’d motor close to the wharf and sleep in the boat so she could be there first thing when Jumpin' opened. She was making decent money and never had to step foot in town again for anything.

Unlikely Heroes

For a while, Kya was able to support herself with mussels money, but all the money in the world didn’t make up for a lack of human connection. The days stretched long, and Kya’s loneliness stretched with them. Ever since she’d seen Tate that day a few years ago, she’d caught glimpses of him now and then out in the estuary. She wanted to approach him, make contact with someone besides Jumpin', but she never did. She only ever watched him from afar.

Life at the shack had dwindled. Dishes went undone, her collection of feathers and shells were haphazardly strewn about the floor, and her clothes became tattered and rank. She had no shoes and no way of changing her...

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The first order of business was to inform Chase’s family of his death. Then, his body was transported to the morgue for an autopsy. Sheriff Jackson told the doctor not to mention anything about Chase’s death or the strange circumstances to anyone in town.

Soon, Deputy Joe Purdue arrived, and the men went about investigating the scene. They were reluctant to call it a murder just yet, but they both agreed it was starting to seem like it wasn’t a freak accident. They photographed the body and surrounding mud. They climbed up the fire tower stairs and saw that one of the grates on the far side was open. Sixty feet below the open grate sat the outline of Chase’s body.

The open grate was odd. People might forget to close the grate over the stairs, but it was unusual for any of the other grates to be opened, let alone left open. Joe questioned why someone would leave the grate open if they had pushed Chase into the hole, but Ed understood. If someone wanted his death look like an accident, the grate had to be open.

For two hours, Ed and Joe collected fingerprints from the grate, the stair railing, and anything else someone might have touched. They collected blood and fiber...

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Sitting in the silence, Kya found the courage to ask the question she’d been wanting to ask since finding that first feather—why he helped her and gave her all those gifts and materials. Shouldn’t he be spending time with a girlfriend from school? Tate said he preferred to be in nature than in town, and he liked how interested Kya was in marsh life. Most people never thought about all the living things in the marsh the way she did.

What he didn’t say was that he felt bad for the way she was alone. He’d heard the rumors about the Marsh Girl in town and knew boys dared each other to tag her house as a right of passage. He also didn’t tell her about the boys betting each other about who would devirginize her. There was more Tate wasn’t saying, like how his feelings had grown from those of a protective brother to the strong desire of a man. His feelings were so intense, sometimes they hurt.

Kya leaned close to Tate and felt her energy shift. She wondered if he felt it, too. At that moment, a heavy breeze blew through, sending thousands of yellow leaves from the surrounding sycamores cascading through the sky above them. Tate and Kya leaped up and chased the swirling leaves,...

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A few days later, Kya returned to Jumpin’s. Jumpin' wasn’t at his usual post, but someone else was at the wharf—Chase Andrews. Chase approached Kya with all the confidence of someone used to being adored. He asked her if she would join him for a picnic over the weekend. Kya was apprehensive, but she agreed, not wanting to miss the opportunity to be in someone’s presence again.

Instead of going straight home, Kya drifted in the open water and stared at the sky. She recited poetry from memory, including one from unknown local poet Amanda Hamilton she’d read in the newspaper. The poem was about love being set free from its cage and allowed to wander the shore. It made her think of Tate, and the old hurt and anger roiled up inside.

What Kya didn’t know was that Tate hadn’t abandoned her, at least not in the way she thought. Tate was ready to leave Chapel Hill as planned the day before the Fourth of July, but his professor at the lab invited him to join a birding expedition over the weekend. He would be the only student in a group of renowned ecologists. There was no way he could refuse.

**Fifteen days later, Tate arrived in Barkley Cove desperate to see Kya and apologize for...

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The men agreed to drive out to the shack to talk to the Marsh Girl and find out what she knew. If they brought up the necklace and she seemed disturbed, there could be something to Patty Love’s theory.

The next morning, the men woke before dawn and drove to the shack. They wanted to try to catch Kya before she took off in her boat. When they arrived, they parked a ways down the lane and crept silently to the shack. Nobody answered when they knocked, and despite their early arrival, the boat was already gone. They tried another day and found the boat tied up on the shore, but nobody answered when they knocked. They had an inkling that the Marsh Girl was hiding in the woods, but there was nothing they could do without a warrant.

The Marsh Girl

Because Chase Andrew’s murder was the biggest thing to hit Barkley Cove in decades, Ed and Joe couldn’t go anywhere without being bombarded with questions. After the last failed attempt to find the Marsh Girl at the shack, the men entered the Dog-Gone and got an earful. Townspeople asked if they’d found anything new, why there was no evidence, whether they’d considered certain people around town, whether they knew what they...

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When they entered Asheville, Kya couldn’t believe the tall buildings and hundreds of people milling about. She searched each of their faces, hoping to see Ma or Pa among them.

Chase drove across town and pulled into a small drive-up motel. Their room reeked of cleaning supplies and was filled with shabby furniture. The bed took up most of the space, and Kya understood what was about to happen. With all those lovely nights under the stars, this was where they would consummate the relationship. Nothing about the room felt like love.

Chase had always been gentle with her on all those nights of touching and kissing. But now, granted access to her body, he plowed forward, ignoring the discomfort that comes with losing one’s virginity, until he was finished. Without any concern for Kya, he rolled over and passed out. The whole time, Kya had watched the blinking neon “Vacancy” sign through the window.

Is This What Love Is?

After that night at the motel, Chase and Kya continued making love. Kya always experienced an unsatisfied sensation when it was over, but she didn’t know what to say about it or if it was even okay to say something. Weeks went by, and then Christmas...

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Over coffee, the siblings talked about Jodie’s tours in Vietnam and degree in mechanical engineering from Georgia Tech. Kya told him about Pa leaving, and Jodie was surprised to hear that she’d been there all alone since shortly after he left. He apologized for leaving her with Pa and not coming sooner. When he returned from the war, he’d assumed she was already gone.

Kya looked at her brother with emotion. She didn’t blame him. He was a victim just as she was. She asked if he knew anything about their other siblings or mother. Jodie didn’t know anything about their brother or sisters, but he’d found out a week ago that their mother had died two years earlier. Kya crumbled at the news.

The Long-Lost Matriarch

Kya’s mother had suffered a breakdown after years of abuse from Pa. Little known to anyone in the family, she’d been writing letters to her sister, Rosemary, about life in the swamp and being abused. The day she left, she made her way to her hometown of New Orleans and showed up on her family’s doorstep dirty and mute.

Kya’s maternal grandfather had tried unsuccessfully to get news about the children from the Barkley Cove sheriff. Over the next year, Ma...

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Hearing about her possible death made Kya’s breath catch. It wasn’t that she was afraid to die. She was afraid of dying by appointment at the hand of someone else. She’d never relied on anyone for anything, but the thought that her freedom would be hijacked at the last moment of her life terrified her.

The Burden of Proof

The prosecutor, a man named Eric Chastain, was called to present his case first. He had a number of witnesses to call, each with damning evidence against Kya.

He called:

• Rodney Horn, who’d been out fishing when he and a buddy heard a woman screaming. They saw Kya, partially undressed, kicking Chase Andrews while he lay on the ground. The last thing they heard was Kya screaming that if Chase touched her again, she’d kill him.
• The coroner, who testified about the injuries sustained by Chase and the red fibers found on his jacket. The prosecution focused on injuries that pointed to Chase falling backwards, as though pushed, and the match between the fibers on the jacket and those of the hat found at the shack.
• Sheriff Jackson, who testified about finding the body and the investigation. He said they determined it was foul play...

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Picking Up Where She Left Off

Jodie drove Kya home from the jail. She was anxious to see her shack and the environment that had saved her all those years. She rushed into the shack and touched every possession. Jodie had a bag of crumbs waiting for her, and she ran to the beach, tossing crumbs to her seabirds and crying with joy.

When Kya got back to the shack, she was surprised to find Jodie still in it, so used to being alone. Jodie asked Kya to sit and have tea with him. He wanted to stay and help her readjust for a few days, and he didn’t want what had happened to harden her even more against people. Jodie saw the verdict as a new beginning and thought people would accept her now.

Kya didn’t want to hear anything Jodie had to say. She wanted to be alone, as she’d always been. Kya left the shack and disappeared into the forest, but Jodie couldn’t bring himself to leave. He made dinner, hoping to try again when Kya returned, but she never did.

Kya waited for Jodie to leave before she returned home. She tried to paint, but the images were dark and angry. Kya didn’t know what to do with all the furious emotions she felt, and she was suddenly remorseful for the...