"Where the Crawdads Sing": Coming Soon a Theater Near You!
Delia Owens paints a harrowing portrait of a woman in dire straits.
[First Published: July 8, 2022]
In the summer of 2018, an unusual debut novel by a retired wildlife biologist named Delia Owens was published. The book, which had an odd title and did not fit neatly into any literary genre, hardly seemed destined to be a blockbuster.
A year and a half later, Where the Crawdads Sing, an absorbing, atmospheric tale about a lonely girl’s coming-of-age in the marshes of North Carolina, sold more than four and a half million copies. It is an astonishing trajectory for any debut novelist, much less for a reclusive, 70-year-old scientist whose previous published works chronicled the decades she spent in the deserts and valleys of Botswana and Zambia. With the help of Reese Witherspoon and her book club, Owens’ best-selling novel has been adapted into a film.
The novel resonates with a swath of American readers at a moment when mass media are deeply fragmented, and algorithm-driven entertainment companies feed consumers a stream of content tailored to their particular tastes. Instead, Crawdads appeals to a wide demographic of American readers.
Where the Crawdads Sing is the story of a young girl, Kya, as she navigates growing up all by herself since her family leaves her. For a book about a girl who is isolated in the wilderness and wrestling with loneliness in the 1960s American South, the story has had an oddly unifying effect in a time of rapid technological advances and constant social media connectivity. Kya remains attuned to the North Carolina marsh, where she lives in an old shack, constantly admiring nature’s beauty, from the plants to the creatures to the water. Her close study of the environment teaches her many lessons, and her survival turns into a mostly happy existence. The girl grows into a clever young woman who knows how to fend for herself and live off the land. Her life becomes more complicated when romance enters the picture, and the story takes a sharp turn.
Her isolation lessens with the presence of two young men–both of whom take a liking to Kya at different points in her life. There is Tate Walker, the gentle boy who admires Kya for who she is and observes her with quiet fascination. Contrarily, there is also Chase Andrews, who comes from a totally different way of life than she does. The dichotomy between not only the attraction but the larger social implications of these two men presents a case all too similar to the real world. Relationships of all kinds, personal, professional, or merely transactional, almost always come with some sort of social trade-off. Whether you inherently recognize them, they are nonetheless present in a collective society. Kya’s interactions with the two boys lead to a much larger and necessary discussion on social pressures, which Owens navigates wonderfully under the backdrop of an all-too American setting.
The movie will attempt to bring this unique work of fiction to the big screen. Daisy Edgar-Jones fills the lead role of Kya, who has a Southern accent rather than Jones’ English or even Irish one. Edgar-Jones broke out as the star of another book adaptation, Normal People, on Hulu and recently starred in the highly touted FX limited series Under the Banner of Heaven alongside Andrew Garfield. Taylor John Smith plays Tate Walker, and Harris Dickinson plays Chase Andrews. Joe Chrest, who might be most well-known for playing Mike Wheeler’s father Ted in Stranger Things, will play Dr. Cone, and David Strathairn rounds out the main ensemble as Tom Milton.
Where the Crawdads Sing is being released exclusively in theaters next week (July 15), meaning the only way to see the film is in a movie theater.