Where the Crawdads Sing- Delia Owens

In the heart of the passage is a series born from my love for books. Even though I feel I do not read enough, books bring me great joy. Reading draws you immensely into a story and its characters. The world and all its noise seem to shut off instantly. There are pages that tug at you more than others and they linger on long after you have finished reading the book. Here I will tell you a little about the passages I loved in a book and what made me grow to love them. Perhaps some of them are yours too.

[Highlighted Excerpts taken for reference from Where the Crawdads Sing- Delia Owens]

I read Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens in 2020. It was a book I instantly fell in love with. The book brings out the intimate feeling of belonging to a place and sometimes believing that the place was meant or made only for you. For Kya it was the Marsh and she was so attuned to it. She breathed everything about it. I grew up in a coastal suburb and I’ve never really left it at any point in my life. My whole life has constantly revolved around it. Just as Kya I feel it’s a place made for me and attach deeper meaning to it.

The passage where it was Kya’s birthday and she hoped that her ma would come back for it was the most heart breaking and the most uplifting when she called to the gulls in the sky and one large gull settled onto the sand near Kya and she told the bird, “It’s my birthday.” You knew then that Kya would never feel alone that nature would be her closest friend.

My favourite part of the book was when Tate started giving Kya reading lessons something she had not learnt to do. When Kya unravelled the words of the sentence: “There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot.” Her realization that words could hold so much was the sweetest part. It would bear such deep meaning for Kya to be able to read that she would later in life go on to be a talented naturalist, artist, and writer.

My favorite Amanda Hamilton poem

“Fading moon, follow

My footsteps

Through light unbroken

By land shadows,

And share my senses

That feel the cool

Shoulders of silence.

“Only you know

How one side of a moment

 Is stretched by loneliness

For miles

To the other edge,

And how much sky

Is in one breath

When time slides backward

From the sand.”

This poem reflects Kya’s deep loneliness and her close relationship to nature. It is beautiful how these poems lend a mystery throughout the book and are so apt with what Kya was going through at every stage.

Where the Crawdads Sing- Delia Owens is the kind of book I would read again and one that I related to on many levels. It is a book full of emotion, suspense and romance. In the heart of the passage I found Kya a character so vividly colorful, sensitive, vulnerable, and intelligent. You feel like you know her. What is your favorite Amanda Hamilton poem?