Where the Crawdads Sing: Equal Parts Beautiful and Unbelievable

The newly released film adaption of Delia Owen’s best selling debut novel Where The Crawdads Sing offered Austin NextTribers a great summer escape. Eager to get out of the 100-plus degree heat, we took a trip back in time to the marshes of the American South. Many of us had read the bestseller (over 12 million copies sold worldwide) when it was published a few years back and were eager to see if the new film did it justice.

A heavy dose of suspension of disbelief is needed to wrap your head around a 12 year old figuring out how to feed and clothe herself.

Author Owens has an interesting backstory as a zoologist and conservationist. This book is her first published novel, coming out when she was more than 70 years old, which is an Aging Boldly story if ever there was one. Reportedly, it took her over a decade to write. She has also written several bestselling non-fiction books about her life as a wildlife scientist. With a Ph.D. in animal behavior, Owens’ work brought her to Botswana in the 1970s to study the importance of female grouping in social mammals, which eventually influenced her fiction writing.