Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens was published in August 2018. It stayed on the New York Times bestselling list for a record 168 weeks, sold over 15 million copies, and was selected by Reese Witherspoon for her book club. I was told many times (too many) by bookstore colleagues, managers, and customers to read the book. “You will love it!” they said. So, of course, I balked at the idea and didn’t read the novel for nearly a year. I liked the book but did not love it.

When the movie came out, I invited my son, who had not read the book, and my daughter-in-law, who had, to be my movie dates. Saturday afternoon in the theater and pizza afterward–a perfect date! We walked out of the theater all saying the movie was fine. We had as much conversation about what pizza to order as we did about the movie. That’s telling, isn’t it?

The movie (as does the book) introduces us to Kya, an engaging and pitiable child who grows up in the marsh near Barkley, North Carolina. The opening scene finds Chase Andrews, a popular young local man dead, having fallen 60 feet from the top of a fire tower into the marsh. Kya is accused of his murder and put on trial.

The movie is part a coming-of-age story and a murder mystery. Through flashbacks, we see Kya being abandoned by her mother, her siblings, and her abusive father. She is alone in her family’s home in the marsh. Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “willing suspension of disbelief” comes to mind when I imagine Kya as a child surviving alone with no schooling and hiding where the crawdads sing from the clutches of social services. The mystery is Chase Andrews’ death. Did he fall? Was he pushed? Why was he in the marsh on the fire tower? Did Kya kill him? If not, who did?

Here are several lasting impressions and images I left the theater with:

-Kya, in a jail cell, is inside/enclosed for the first time in her life. She desperately seeks to look out a small window at the top of the cell. The jail cat (ironically named Justice) comes to her and gives her comfort.

-Kya’s abandonment and isolation in the marsh become visceral. Her being completely alone is presented as a “feeling so vast. She “feels them not here.” She is “invisible.”

-The actors, Daisy Edgar-Jones as Kya and David Strathairn as her lawyer Tom Milton, were fine. The prosecuting attorney Eric Ladin, played by Eric Chastain, created the most lasting impression on me. He was believably smarmy.

-Kya’s marsh environment and her talent as an artist and naturalist are the best parts of the movie. The book described the setting and the marsh creatures in detail, but words on a page can convey only a small, small part of the beauty and danger in nature. “There is no morality in nature.” Fireflies.