By Abhisha Sakthievel
In August 2018, the #1 New York Times bestseller of 2019, Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens officially released. The book was chosen for Reese Witherspoon's Hello Sunshine Book Club and by March 2021, 10 million copies of the book had been sold worldwide. In July 2022, the movie adaptation, produced by Hello Sunshine, came out.
The story is told with two timelines, which are intertwined.
On October 30, 1969, two boys ride to an abandoned fire tower in the swamp on the outskirts of town, where they find beloved Chase Andrews’ dead body sinking in the Marsh. He was widely known as the best quarterback in the area, so this tragedy was devastating for everyone. Police and investigators come to check the scene, only to find that there were no fingerprints or footprints, meaning that the evidence was wiped clean. Once a further investigation takes place, they find out that this was a murder and the immediate suspect was Kya Clark.
Catherine “Kya” Danielle Clark, played by Daisy Edgar-Jones, was an abandoned child, now 19 years old, known as Marsh Girl. In 1952, at the age of 6, Kya was abandoned by her family, which consisted of her 4 siblings and parents who left because of their father’s abuse. She lived in their shack in the Marsh alone, not going to school because of the students’ teasing. For the next 8 years, she would only interact with store owners Jumpin’ and Mabel, who were the reasons why she was able to survive all these years on her own. To pass the time, she would collect seashells, rocks, bones, and feathers, making the shack look like a museum. Over the years, she fell for two people in the town, one of them being Chase Andrews, hence why she was seen as the main suspect. In a very long trial, where her innocence is trying to be proved, many wretched secrets end up unfolding for many different people.
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