We are off to North Carolina shortly, so this novel is an appropriate introduction to that state, although we will not be visiting the coastal marshes where this story takes place. Set mostly in the 1960s and 70s, the central character Kya, the uneducated illiterate Marsh Girl, is abandoned at a young age by her whole family, one by one, and learns to survive and love the natural beauty of lagoons, marsh and undisturbed wetlands. Not only abandoned by family, but by all the locals and by couple of boyfriends, subsisting on the wildlife, selling mussels and befriended only by a local poor uneducated black man, she becomes an expert in the ecology of the area- and in hiding from all those who try to connect with her. Her sketchbooks fill with details of the local flora and fauna.
When a local abusive playboy is found dead in the mud by the fire tower, having fallen or been pushed off of it, she is accused and tried for his apparent murder. I won’t give away more of the complex plot, nor the surprise ending, but the reader will inevitably develop the sympathy and even admiration for the plucky girl.
The writing is lyrical with snippets of poetry interwoven into the story, but the time shift between chapters does not add much to the intrigue. The reader will require a very active imagination and gullibility to believe the preternatural skills that Kya develops for survival; the detailed description of her trial for murder makes it seem obvious that she is an innocent victim, but is she? And the trial very realistically exposes the bigotry and hypocrisy of the locals.
I probably will not watch the coming Fox movie adaptation, as it is unlikely to capture the intricacies of this captivating story. The story is already just a little too unrealistic for my taste, and Reese Witherspoon and Hollywood will likely make it even more farfetched.
The Passionate Reader 