Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens was first published in 2018. The setting is Barkley Cove which is a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. The book begins in 1952 when Kya the youngest of a large family is only six years old, and her mother has just left the family home, a shack on the marsh. The mother was a very much abused woman, but she has left her two remaining children in the care of her abuser, and he hasn’t been slow to lift his hand to his children in the past. It’s a tough life for Kya as it’s not long before Kya’s older brother leaves her and then her father abandons her. She barely manages to feed herself, but when Jumpin’ Jackson who runs a small store that sells fuel realises that Kya is on her own, he, his wife and the congregation of their black church end up helping to clothe Kya.

The white people in Barkley Cove have closed their eyes to everything as they don’t want anything to do with those ‘marsh people’ and when Kya does have to go into town she’s shunned and avoided. So when years later the body of Chase, a well thought of local married man is found on the marsh, fingers are pointed at Kya.

This was a new to me setting which I really liked, the author’s descriptions of the surroundings brought it all to life and I loved that Kya was able to rise above a disastrous upbringing. Although the ‘mystery’ part wasn’t much of a mystery to me I thought that the treatment meted out to Kya by her supposed betters was so authentic, as was her nurturing at a distance by the poorer members of the society.