This post is part of a random daily blog series I am writing throughout January.
I flipped through a used up planner this evening while tidying my desk and found this yellow sticky note on the inside of the cover with the quote: “Look, I’m not gonna lie, you’re gorgeous, free, wild as a dang gale.”
It’s a line from Where the Crawdads Sing. The book, by Delia Owens, is a romance murder mystery. The main character, Kya, is known as the Marsh Girl. She’s an outcast to society that grows up as her siblings and mother leave her. She’s left with a mostly absent drunk father to navigate all that life brings as she grows from child to all that it is to be woman.
Kya is wonderfully curious and wicked smart. She knows nature. She knows deep love. She knows deep loneliness.
It’s a painfully enchanting read. I picked it up last summer and can remember feeling attached to the loneliness of her spirit and soaking up her love for what raised her. And a strange recognition of a fondness for exactly what just is—healthy or not.
There’s a significant mark on Kya’s soul of forced strength and independence. Such that might have grown had she been given a fair chance, but with an edge that only no other option can bring.
As I was looking up the novel’s genre beyond fiction, murder and romance I came across a review calling it a coming of age story. I felt like that made sense, but wanted to see a definition. It’s for sure all of that: “A coming-of-age story focuses on the development of the protagonist(s) from youth to adulthood, with an emphasis on personal growth and mental cultivation.”
I 10/10 recommend.
//GLK.
