Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens

Characters

Catherine Clark – Kya Julienne – mother Jackson “Jake” – father Jodie – brother, 7 years older than Kya (wife, Libby; children Murph and Mindy) Older siblings – Mandy, Missy, Murph (oldest) Tate Walker Scupper – dad Chase Andrews Patti Love and Sam – parents Pearl – wife Jumpin’ - Gas and Bait Mabel – wife Sheriff Ed Jackson Deputy Joe Perdue Tom Milton -lawyer Sundee Justice – courthouse cat Amanda Hamilton – poet Robert Foster – editor The Sea Shells of the Eastern Seaboard, by Catherine Clark The Eastern Seacoast Birds, by Catherine Clark, 1969

For Discussion

NOTE: Page numbers are from the hardback edition of the book.

1. How could Kya’s mother and older siblings abandon her?  On page 13 it says that they all left because of the father, but why didn’t anyone take Kya with them?
2. Were you more sympathetic towards her mother’s decision to leave her children once you knew her story (mentally and physically ill, asked to get children but threatened by father, paintings of children)?
3. When Jodie finally did come back for Kya, was his excuse for why he did not help her good enough?
4. Jake was wounded in the war during an episode where he did not go to help his wounded comrade and he was the only one who knew that.  How did this affect his life?
5. In 1961 when Tate when to college, he did not return for years.  Did you expect him to return on July 4 of that year as he had promised?
6. Did you understand Tate’s decision to leave Kya?  Was it realistic that they could have had a life together?
7. Discuss Chase and his relationship with Kya.  He had come with the plan to have sex one way or another, but on page 162 the author wrote that he stopped and said he understood and that “he was entranced.”  Did he really have a change of heart?  Why did he talk to Kya about marriage (page 189) if he did not plan to do so? Was he really that cruel?
8. Why did Chase continue to wear the shell necklace even after he married Pearl?
9. After Chase got married, Kya compared him to the males of the animal world her mother had called, “leapfrogging sneaky fuckers” (page 212).  Was it realistic that she could have denied him?
10. If the truant officer had found Kya when she was in elementary school and taken her away to a foster family, how would her life have been different?  Which was the best life for her?
11. How do you think Kya would have adapted to a life either with Tate or Chase in the “outside world?”
12. Kya seemed to have a special relationship with animals.  In one instance when she was out in the boat with Chase, porpoises swam to boat and “their keen eyes fixing on Kya…eased up against the hull, and she bowed her face only inches from theirs” (page 178).   Did Sundee Justice, the courthouse cat, also have a special relationship with her?
13. What did you think about the ending?   Were you surprised?
14. Why was this book on the best-seller list for so long?  What made it so popular?

*****
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