Where the Crawdads Sing

In 1952, Catherine Danielle “Kya” Clark, a six-year-old girl, watches as her mother, Marie Jacques Clark (called “Ma”), walks away from the family’s shack for the last time. Her older brother Jodie assures her that mothers in the wild never leave their young for long, so Ma is likely to return. Kya doubts him. The Clark family lives in the marshland around Barkley Cove. The marsh is a no-man’s land populated with people too desperate or too shiftless to move on. It has its own laws.

The day before, Kya noticed bruising on her mother’s forehead, likely from blows from Jake Clark (her father, known as “Pa”). Although Kya waits for her mother to return, Ma doesn’t come back, and the family settles into a routine without her. 

Kya’s brothers and sisters disappear one by one in the following weeks. They’ve grown weary of Pa’s physical and verbal abuse. Jodie is the last to leave. He tells Kya to hide in the marsh from Pa and any strangers who come to the house. Pa is off on a drinking binge, so Kya feeds and takes care of herself for three days.

When Pa returns, he burns most of Ma’s things, including her paintings. Kya learns to dodge Pa’s blows by staying out in the marsh and surrounding woods. Pa has a small disability payment because of his service in World War II. He hands this money over to Kya and tells her she needs to keep house for them in exchange for this money.

Kya takes the money to Barkley Cove to buy food. She runs into local children and some adult townspeople, all of whom avoid her or call her “swamp trash” (18). In the grocery store, when Kya buys grits, the cashier has to count out her change because Kya does not know how to count past twenty-nine. Kya keeps up with the house and chores because she is determined to keep the house nice in case Ma comes back. Her father is rarely there. Kya is disappointed when Ma fails to return for her seventh birthday.

Two boys discover the body of Chase Andrews under an abandoned fire tower in the marsh on October 30, 1969. They go back to town to tell Sheriff Ed Jackson, who crosses the unwritten barrier between the town and the marsh to investigate because Chase’s parents are important people in the small town. The sheriff and the coroner can see no obvious signs of foul play, so they assume Chase must have fallen while socializing with others in the fire tower. They are puzzled, however, that no one came to town for help and that there are no footprints around the body other than those of the two boys who found Chase.

Mrs. Culpepper and another truant officer come to take Kya to school a few days after her birthday. Ignoring Jodie’s advice to run from strangers, Kya gets dressed in her shabby clothes and goes with them because she is eager to learn to read and count. At school, the teachers place Kya in the second grade. Her entire class laughs at her because she cannot spell, and the other students refuse to sit with her at lunch. The other students also jeer at her when she gets off the school bus that afternoon. Kya decides not to go back to school again.

Several weeks later, Kya gets a deep cut in her foot from a nail while playing. She knows she needs to treat the wound to prevent lockjaw, but she is not sure of what to do and has no one to help her. She decides to soak her foot into a tidal pool and mud. The foot heals after eight days. Kya slowly realizes that Ma will not return and that she is mostly alone in the world with Pa so frequently gone. With this acceptance, the “marsh became her mother” (34).