Author: Delia Owens

On a recent trip to the library to check out a book the clerk told me that one of the books I had ordered wasn’t available; our library didn’t have it and it was too recent to be available through an inter-library loan. However, they had acquired another book I had requested (long enough ago that I had forgotten about it).

Kya, the Marsh Girl, lives in a shack in North Carolina’s Outer Banks. She has been abandoned by everyone in her family – her older siblings, her mother, her brother and, finally, her father when she is just ten. She attended school for only one day; the teasing of the other kids was too much and she never went back.

Alone in the marsh and swamps she survives on seafood, selling it in exchange for gas for her father’s old boat. As she matures she has two relationships – both of which end with her being abandoned – and a flourishing career as an artist, writer and an expert on the marsh. When one of her admirers is found dead Kya is charged with murder and faces the death penalty.

I kept hoping throughout the trial that none of the people who had been kind to Kya was the murderer. The ending was quite a surprise.

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