Where the crawdads sing is a fictional story about a young girl, Kya, in a bayou in North Carolina who had been left to raise herself. The story occurs in 1950-1969 but displays acts going back to the 1800’s. The historical character of Kya is said to be based off the real-life unsolved murder, one of the most involved witnesses being the author herself, Daila Owens. The author lived in Africa at the time and was not present when the murder occurred but was considered a witness to the crime. No charges against her have ever been laid.

The book opens with the discovery of the body of chased Andreous by two boys near the swamp at the near opposite end of town. It goes to tell the story of 6-year-old Kya who watches her mother, then all her siblings abandon her alone with her drunken …show more content…
In the front of the book there is a map labeled with various places, one of which is called “colored town.” When looking back at history you can see how not too many years ago people were divided into living situations by which race you were. Although horrible, it is a part of our history and Delia Owes decided to add it to display how people acted in these times and to really show how people could be so mean. Another aspect is how the men in the story underestimated the woman. Sexism has been happening for centuries and sometimes still shows up in these time periods but is nowhere close to as bad as it was years ago. In the story, they underestimated the “uneducated” “Marsh girl” but she was smart enough to avoid trouble and keep herself safe all on her own, as well as keeping the fact that she killed a man a secret. Finally, there were a few mentions of how WWII affected the father, how he had turned into a man he could not recognize. He abused his children, causing most of them to leave, and he lost himself to alcohol because of the things he had seen in the