This debut novel by Delia Owens, an American wildlife scientist, takes place from 1952 to 1970 in the swamplands of North Carolina where six-year-old Kya Clark has been abandoned by her family and grows up alone, in a shack. Her natural instinct to survive, and her innate curiosity of nature, enables her to fend for herself and adapt to a strange, solitary, yet fascinating existence. She finds food in nature, gathers mussels to sell to the shops beyond the creek, and evades truant officers who are ever in search of the abandoned child. This is a revealing story of a girl whose observations of wild animals and their habitat guide her through her own journey into womanhood. A suspicious death, racial bigotry, and Darwinian theories weave into the fabric of a book that has become an overnight bestseller.
- Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons
- Hardcover: 384pages