Where the Crawdads Sing

 

A book. A movie

Where the Crawdads Sing, the 2018 book by Delia Owens was her first novel. It topped The New York Times Fiction Best Sellers list for 2019 AND for 2020. Okay, so Where the Crawdads Sing is not on this week's New York Times Best Sellers List, but it was on that list for more than 168 weeks.

Owens has a BS in zoology from the University of Georgia and a PhD in animal behavior from the University of California at Davis. Her studies of African wildlife behavioral ecology have been published in such scientific, peer-reviewed journals as Nature, the Journal of Mammalogy, and Animal Behaviour.

Although most of her field work was done in Africa, it's safe to say that she knows where from she speaks in describing the world of Where the Crawdads Sing. And she describes the saltwater marshes of the North Carolina coast beautifully.

In the Prologue she sets the scene, and the scene is as great a part of the story as the human characters.

     "Marsh is not swamp. Marsh is a space of light, where grass grows in water, and water flows

     into the sky. Slow-moving creeks wander, carrying the orb of the sun with them to the sea, 

     and long-legged birds lift with unexpected grace--as though not built to fly...."

     "Then within the marsh, here and there, true swamp crawls into low-lying bogs, hidden in 

     clammy forests. [....] There are sounds of course, but compared to the marsh, the swamp is 

     quiet because decomposition is cellular work. Life decays and reeks and returns to the 

     rotted duff; a poignant wallow of death begetting life."

 As in all good murder mysteries, Owens gives us a body. 

     "On the morning of October 30, 1969, the body of Chase Andrews lay in the swamp.... 

     A swamp knows all about death, and doesn't necessarily define it as tragedy, certainly 

     not a sin. But this morning two boys from the village rode their bikes out to the old 

     fire tower and ... spotted his denim jacket."

But is it murder or is it suicide? If it is murder, who dunit?

Kya's story begins the first of two timelines in 1952. She is six years old, the youngest of five children.

    

     "The morning burned so August-hot, the marsh's moist breath hung the oaks and pines 

     with fog. The palmetto patches stood unusually quiet except for the low, slow flap of 

     the heron's wings lifting from the lagoon. Kya [...] heard the screen door slap. Standing 

     on the stool, she stopped scrubbing grits from the pot and lowered it into the basin of 

     worn-out suds."

The sound of that screen door shutting was her mother leaving. In the following weeks, Kya's oldest brother and two sisters left, too. Her brother Jodie, seven years older than she, was the last to leave her alone with their father.

 

     "She knew by the way [Jodie] spoke that Pa had slugged him in the face."

     "'Kya, ya be careful, hear. If anybody comes, don't go in the house, they can get ya there. 

     Run deep in the marsh, hide in the bushes. Always cover yo' tracks; I learned ya how. And 

     ya can hide from Pa, too.'"

When I first heard about this book, I was skeptical about so much of the story. A six-year-old left in the care of a physically abusive, alcoholic? The local authorities were aware of the situation and they did nothing?

My initial skepticism of that part of the story evaporated pretty quickly when compared with my own experiences. 

I worked for Oklahoma's welfare department in the 70s, some twenty-five years after this story starts. I'm sorry to say, things were not much different. We had a sexually abusive family. The abuse was documented by older children who had gotten themselves out of the home. They provided us with photos. We took the photos to the local assistant district attorney and were told he didn't want to look at them. Nothing was done. And that was not the only time families were treated differently by the law. Not because they were "swamp rats," like in North Carolina, but because they were "white trash."

Then there was the question of how a six-year-old could survive without parental care and guidance. 

For a period of time after everybody else left, her father stopped drinking so heavily. He taught her about fishing and operating his boat. He had been injured in World War II and received a weekly disability check from which he gave her small amounts of money to buy food and fuel for the boat. But he took to drink again, coming home less and less often until he just never came home again.

The people in the village, for the most part, ignored her or ridiculed her. Over the years, when the authorities took note of Kya, they attempted to literally catch her and put her into "normal" situations like school or a group home. Attempts, she saw as trying to trap her like an animal.

There were a few people in the Barkley Cove community who did befriend her, albeit mostly from a distance -- Jumpin' and Mabel, the African American couple ran the town's equivalent of a convenience store. They treated Kya with kindness and respect and provided what parental guidance she received. Tate, the son of a fisherman, taught her to read and provided her with books from the library. And Chase Andrews, whose daddy owned the local Western Auto store, fed Kya's dream of being accepted in   Barkley Cove.

The salt marshes of North Carolina were Kya's natural habitat. Kya was smart. She learned about life, about survival, from those saltwater marshes. Kya mostly did what she could figure out on her own to do. And, like her mother, she was a talented artist, drawing and painting and describing her world. 

The second timeline weaves in, around, and through Kya's life. It starts in 1969 and covers the investigation of Chase Andrews' death, Kya's murder trial, and the rest of her life. 

The local authorities decided that the manner of death of Chase, a football star and the only child of the closest thing to society in Barkley Cove, must be murder. His status in the community must surely make him immune to suicide, and he was too athletic to just fall from the old fire watch tower. Someone must have lured him up there and pushed him to his death. Chase's clandestine relationship with Kya, the swamp girl, while planning to marry a more acceptable Barkley Cove girl, made Kya the most obvious perpetrator. Her low status, also made her the least able to defend herself -- a slam dunk conviction for the prosecutor and a satisfying solution to the mystery for the townsfolk. 

And now it's a movie!

Where the Crawdads Sing, the film is visually stunning. It was filmed in the saltwater marshes of Louisiana, and they are beautiful. Filled with the natural world, neither the book nor the movie mentions dangers from animals native to saltwater marshes -- I'm thinking, mosquitos and ticks and alligators, all of which can cause death either by disease or predation. Both the book and the movie focus on the most dangerous animal in nature. Man.

Where the Crawdads Sing, the movie, deserves very high marks. 

Kudos to the Producers led by Reese Witherspoon. They knew what they had and produced a movie faithful to the original story. 

To Polly Morgan, Director of Cinematography, for the lush photography.

To Screen Writer Lucy Alibar for fitting the story into the movie's two hour and twenty-five minute time frame.

To Casting Director David Rubin for putting together this wonderful cast.

To the actors including, but not limited to 

           

             Jojo Regina as Little Kya                            Daisy Edgar-Jones as Kya

  
                 Sterling Macer Jr.  and  Michael Hyatt                                Harris Dickinson

                           as Jumpin' and Mabel                                                as bad boy Chase

and David Strathairn as Tom Milton

Kya's defense attorney

And certainly, high marks to Director Olivia Newman who knew what she had when the actors gave her good performances.

Both the book and the movie are excellent. Truth be told, you can only read the book. Or you can only see the movie. Each is worth your time on its own. Me? I'm glad I did both.

Weather! -- Nonfiction

Who is this mystery man?

Me? I write mysteries. And a man like this can be inspiring. Dressed like this and entering a convenience store or, God forbid, a bank, this man would draw all kinds of unwelcome attention. But, dear friends, this is my husband dressed to do battle today. In our neighborhood. We had 8.5 inches of snow, the biggest so far this season. That's official because he measured it.

     

         This is my neighborhood, a view from my desk.                  And this is how my bad cat
                                                                                                    Kocka enjoys the view.

As I write this we have warmed up to 3 degrees Fahrenheit. Thank goodness the wind is not blowing or it would feel even colder than it does. And it feels pretty darn cold.

The writing gurus exhort us to avoid writing weather. The old "dark and stormy night" thing.

But, having grown up in Tornado Alley, the weather has been an important character in the story of my life. The last thing I watch at night is the local weather forecast and then, again, the first thing in the morning. I quickly develop strong preferences for this meteorologist over that one. I think I would recognize them anywhere -- even at the dentist's office, and Goodness knows I go deaf, dumb, and blind the minute I pass through the doors to my dentist's office.

In Oklahoma, where super cell tornadoes can be a problem, we watched for the local TV stations' helicopters and storm tracker trucks. If David Payne, an Oklahoma City meteorologist, passed you on the highway in bad weather, the best thing to do is to turn around 'cause wherever he's going, you don't want to be there.

Now I live southwest of and a little more than 600 feet above Denver, Colorado, where they give the weather by altitude. Even if you don't watch the weather news, all those pickup trucks running around town with blades on the front should be warning enough. It's gonna snow.

There are some good things about snow in Colorado. One of our major industries is tourism fueled in the winter by skiers and snowboarders. And, although Denver is located on America's High Plains Desert, we have snow melt for the water necessary to modern life. After last night the snow pack in our watershed the South Platte will be at more than 100% of average.

Another good thing is the large force of experienced snowplow drivers ready, willing, and able to come out in the cold and dark and clear our highways and streets. Luckily we live on a street that is regularly plowed so we've never been trapped in our home by the snow.

And down here where we live, the sun comes out the next day or second day after at the most, and dries the streets and warms us so that coats are usually not necessary. Regardless of the ambient temperature, we can resume our outdoor lives.

On mornings like this, I wake before dawn with soft white light sifting through the blinds. It's not moonlight. It's snowlight. I'm surrounded by the hum of the heater promising me safety from the cold. I lie in bed listening for the first snowplow to break the quiet of the neighborhood. It moves on, leaving no shadow of its sound.

This snow was different. The flakes were so tiny and so dry that they didn't stick together at all. They fell through the openings on the picnic table and between the floor boards on the deck. Only where they stacked up on the railing did we get an idea of how much snow had fallen.

                       

Yep, that's my husband. He cleared our driveway and the sidewalks around our house and in front of our neighbors' houses. He actually worked up a sweat following that snowblower. The neighbors here do that for each other. Last snowfall it was our neighbor Heather with a double-wide snow shovel who cleared our walk and drive.

It's now midday. We've warmed up to six degrees. The sun is not yet out, but the clouds are thinning and the future promising. There's the odd car, now and then, breaking the silence on our street. Tomorrow will be sunny and warmer. We're supposed to get up to 30 degrees.

Hope y'all can enjoy your winter as much as I'm enjoying mine.

Manner of Death and Means of Murder

Lone Star Tick Image from
dailynewsdig.com

“Death by misadventure,” a phrase describing manner of death catches my ear and stimulates my imagination. “Unintended consequences” does too. Both spring from the concept of “accident” but imply some sort of human intent, though not necessarily “good” intent or “well considered” intent.

The idea of someone meriting a Darwin Award by bumbling into their own death does not make for a good murder mystery, in my opinion. However, if a third party bumbles into someone’s death while that third party is involved in some nefarious activity – now I’m interested. Or if the dead person colluded in the crime. Or some other crime.

If the dead person were an innocent, and the murderer a jealous lover or crooked business partner or a crazed serial killer, the story very well may not be a mystery at all, but a news story. And those stories can and do inspire murder mystery writers.

All murder mystery writers understand that the most dangerous animal in the woods is homo sapiens sapiens – modern humans. Naturally, the fact that most murder mystery readers are modern humans makes them inordinately interested in what their confreres do or have done to them.

As to “means of murder.”

Agatha Christie was particularly fond of poison. Check out the Agatha Christie section of Torre Abbey Gardens in her hometown of Torquey, England. (May have to add Torquey to my Bucket List.) John LesCroart’s The First Law uses guns – up to and including a major shoot-out. (Maybe I should put San Francisco on the Bucket List.) Nevada Barr in Ill Wind takes advantage of a geologic peculiarity. (Definitely should put Mesa Verde on the ole Bucket List. It’s a lot closer to my house.)

My husband’s education and a lot of his professional experience is in the field of Veterinary Medicine. He says “The most dangerous animal in the woods, after man, is the tick.” Just imagine a man with a tick.

What an intriguing thought. Ticks, as described in Wikipedia, will make your blood run cold and reach for the DEET. And that’s just reading about them.

They have eight legs like their arachnid relatives, spiders and mites. They meet all their nutritional needs by sucking blood. They can carry disease-causing bacteria, viruses, and protozoa. Indeed, they can carry more than one pathogen at the same time making diagnosis and treatment more difficult.

In far southeast Arkansas, where we had a veterinary clinic, my husband provided blood samples from our patients with ehrlichiosis to Dr. Sidney Ewing at Oklahoma State University School of Veterinary Medicine. Ehrlichiosis is caused by members of the genus Ehrlichia, a genus of bacteria named for the German microbiologist Paul Ehrlich. One of those little beasties is Ehrlichia Ewingii, named for OSU's Dr. Ewing. (Rather a perverse honor, I think – having a disease causing agent named for you.)

Ehrlichiosis in dogs and humans has long been successfully treated with Doxycycline but some of our cases were proving to be drug resistant. And untreated or unsuccessfully treated, the disease is lethal.

The important thing in treating any tick-borne disease is beginning treatment immediately which requires early diagnosis or at least awareness that the sufferer has been exposed to a tick so treatment can be started. 

Just think, if the intended victim had not been in the woods – maybe did not even live in an area known to be a tick-bite risk area . . . .

The murderer could acquire the ticks elsewhere. Overnight by UPS then give the little buggers easy access to a blood source to keep them alive – say a mouse the murderer is not particularly fond of. And then access to the victim -- say in the hair behind the ear.

The local medics wouldn’t know to ask about recent tick bites or look for ehrlichia or promptly start proper treatment. Voila – Murder by Tick.

You Can't Have Too Many Cooks.

from evpersoneli.net

    "I've been thinking," my husband says as he comes into the room. Those of you who know us know that that is my line. At which, he rolls his eyes, puts down his book, and waits to hear just what scheme I've come up with now. 

    You notice I leave out the adjective "harebrained" which he would not be so rude as to say out loud.

    But, since it is he who has begun the conversation with that line I have no idea how to respond. He sees my confusion and explains, "Your mystery virus."

    Now I'm really confused. I was quietly working an online jigsaw puzzle with my brain (hare- or otherwise) happily parked in neutral.

    "For your book," he says. "You said you wanted a virus." There followed an interesting, in depth explanation of the corona family of viruses. 

    And he's absolutely right. I need an airborne virus for my new book. One that is likely to continue to evolve into the future and spread havoc among humans.

    Being a mystery writer, I'm always in the market for a poison, a sharp instrument, a lethal creature, any interesting mode of murder. And because my books take place in the future I need causes of death that are plausible -- a virus that might exist when we humans are living in colonies in space. 

    I talk to today's doctors, police officers, computer scientists, plumbers, cooks, everybody. They can imagine future changes in their fields. Those changes may seem fantastical today, but they just might happen. After all, it hasn't been very long ago that things we depend on daily didn't exist, at least not the way they do today.

    Like cell phones. I was trying to think of items that could be easily stolen and sold. The cell phone would be good. It's small enough to conceal and walk away with, but my daughter pointed out that the technology already exists to render a phone inoperable if it's stolen. And a phone that won't work has no value. Many electronics can be traced if they're stolen and in the future they probably all will be tagged some way, making them unsaleable. She suggested jewelry. Of course!

    I love it when my friends and family share their imaginations with me. 

    Stories that take place in the future need musical instruments that don't exist today, games, entertainments, sports, vices. 

    Safe to say, all the old vices will still be around, they'll just be marketed in different forms. And like I'm fond of saying, "Humans will always be human and murder happens."

   

How to Write a Murder Mystery

 

by Duelpad on DeviantART

 

 
One of my Beta Readers suggested that I include a scene summing up the story, as do many mystery writers. She is very well-read, quite bright, loves books, and has a library background including choosing which books to include in the libraries she worked for. So I have good reason to take her suggestion seriously.

Mystery writers have had long and illustrious careers producing just such summing up scenes. Agatha Christie comes immediately to mind. Her Hercule Poirot was forever gathering everyone into the parlor to explain who done it. And this is not a hidebound tradition abandoned to the dead-and-buried writers’ club. J.K. Rowling writing as Robert Galbraith employed it in The Cuckoo’s Calling. So it is still legitimate and still in good standing.

So I thought about it. Initially I had chosen not to have just such an explanation of the story. My favorite living, American author is John Irving. Yes, I know he doesn’t write murder mysteries, but aren’t all novels mysteries? If you know who done it and what they done in the first few pages, why would you read the whole thing?

What I like about Irving is that he trusts his readers to know what happens without spoon feeding it to them. Admittedly there have been times when I went back to see ‘When did that happen?’ only to find that he didn’t actually say that’s what happened, but obviously it did!

To me it’s like explaining a painting or a ballet or a poem or a joke. If the work is well-done, the audience will get it.

And my whole point in writing Murder on Ceres has been to write a book like I want to read. A murder mystery. A science fiction murder mystery.

Well, I’ve discovered that I want Murder on Ceres to be the kind of book other people will want to read. So traditions must be considered.

After having read The Cuckoo’s Calling, I decided it would be a good idea. The author’s summing up scene in no way offended me or interfered with my satisfaction at the end of my reading it.

I thought of two different scenes in which to do it, one of which would lead into my next book. But, I don’t want to do it. I added bits and pieces to the manuscript toward the end of the book that are pretty specific and will, I hope, take the place of a summing up scene.


J is for Justice

J is for Justice

 Justice is one of those two needs that motivate our highest and our basest behaviors. The other is Safety. Neither is attainable. We can’t give nor get them. Scholars and philosophers have studied and discussed them. Governments and religions have been built around promises of providing them. Tiny humans take up the concepts as soon as they realize that they are separate from the world around them.

Perhaps because Justice and Safety are impossible to have in our everyday lives, we imagine them. We invent stories around them.

The bad guy is identified, stopped, and punished. Safety is restored and Justice is served. There is nothing so dissatisfying as a murder mystery that goes unsolved or a villain who goes unpunished.

It happens all the time in real life and we still stop what we’re doing to watch our daily dose of news about the O.J. Simpsons and the Oscar Pistoriuses of the world on trial. We weren’t there. We can’t know what really happened or who did what or why. We hear too many possibilities – the prosecution’s story, the defense’s story.

These events underscore the perception that Justice is not only blind, but she’s lame. She staggers and stumbles along like Shakespeare’s Richard III, Cheated of feature by dissembling nature, Deform’d, unfinish’d, scarce half made up. The difference in Justice in the real world and Justice in Shakespeare’s fictional world is that Shakespeare could establish without a reasonable doubt what the crime was, who the criminal was, exact the appropriate punishment, and reassure the realm of a time to come with smooth-fac’d peace, With smiling plenty, and fair prosperous days!

Since I have to live a real life, I am thankful for the fiction writers who give me moments and hours of respite in the imagined world of Justice and Safety.

 

C is for Character Development

C is for Character Development

 

If you want to write and write well, no matter the genre, whether memoir, thriller, or a grant proposal, you need skills. I recommend working with a good writing teacher. You can check out my teacher at www.williambernhardt.com. Bill always says, "show don't tell."

 

The following exerpt is from my, as yet, unpublished murder mystery, Murder on Ceres. The story starts out on a colony in low orbit around Ceres, the largest body in the Main Asteroid Belt. The protagonist is a police detective named Rafe. This scene introduces his mother Rose. Lucy is a friend of his wife Terren. Terren is distraught over the death of a very close friend. Charles is Rafe's father.

Door chimes startled Lucy awake. She glanced at the screen and saw Terren’s mother-in-law in the pop-up. Rose Sirocco’s eyes gazed inquiringly up at the door cam. Green eyes like Rafe’s. Two of the few people she knew with green eyes. She liked having someone look up to her, or at least seem to look up to her. Even a much older person. To be fair, at 162 centimeters, they were exactly the same height. Short by Cererian standards.

Her reader slipped to the floor as she got up to answer the door.

“Mrs. Sirocco.”

“Hello, dear. Didn’t Rafe tell you I was coming to sit with Terren?” Rose Sirocco looked her up and down. Probably noting her rumpled appearance.

Lucy finger-combed her straight brown hair. “Yes, ma’am. He did. I must’ve dozed off.” She picked up the fallen reader. “Three chapters deep in the latest Turner thriller. Guess it’s not that thrilling.”

“Oh, keep at it, dear.” Rose set a bright pink bag emblazoned with a crisp letter “S” on the floor. “Though not quite as thrilling as his last book. Still, it’s worth reading.” She put her blue beret and handbag, each also marked with an “S” on the entry table next to Rafe’s chess board.

She centered the white queen on the correct square. “Charles is forever accepting things in lieu of money for his legal services. This was from that woman they thought embezzled from the hospital.” An antique from Earth, the chess set was probably very valuable. “I can’t remember for sure. Maybe it was from that man accused of killing his wife and her lover. A nice man, really. Ah well, it was a good gift for Rafe.”

She straightened the mirror over the table. “Don’t you think this looks so much better here than it did in that tiny little place they used to live in?” She plumped her iron gray curls into shape. The hat had not flattened her hair at all. Like her, those curls would not be restrained.

“Don’t you have reading glasses, dear?” Rose turned to the house controls near the door and brought the lights in the living room up to near full-sun, dialed the room temperature down, and switched off the lights in the garden.

 “I think they’re much easier on your eyes.” She pulled food containers out of the pink bag. “Charles thinks mine are too heavy. They make little dents on my nose, but I think the graphics are so much better than the new ones.”

Lucy didn’t offer her opinion. She didn’t find an opportunity to.

 

Editors! Who Needs 'em?

 

   I do. That's who. Everyone who writes for public consumption does. And we need editors for lots of reasons.

   This is a picture of a page from Murder on Ceres, my science fiction murder mystery. Please note all the red ink. That's from my editor. The green is mine.

   I use Spell Check, Google, The American Heritage Dictionary, and Microsoft's Synonyms. I read Isaac Asimov and John Lescroat. I watch Neil deGrasse Tyson and Masterpiece Mystery! on PBS. I am prepared to write (and rewrite) this book.

   Still my manuscript comes back from the editor with blood all over it.

   I read and watch lots of other things, all of which increase my vocabulary. A large vocabulary, unfortunately, does not guarantee clear communication. The picture above is an excellent example.

   In this scene my protagonist is verbally assaulted by his aunt as she takes him in to talk to his uncle. I wrote, "Unaware of his wife's broadside, Dmitri stood and extended his hand."

   My editor wrote in red,  "of her what? It sounds like you're talking about her butt."

   Obviously my editor was crazy. Where did she get THAT?

   Did I mention that I have a long history of reading naval war books?

   So, enter a twenty-something man. I read to him the passage as I had written it, assuming his reading background was sufficient to make familiar to him the term "broadside." And he blurted, "What did he do to her butt?"

   Definitely a laugh-out-loud moment.

   I think my choices are to change the word or send a copy of Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander to all who buy my book with the requirement that they read it first so they will be properly prepared to read my book.



Blog Hop

Thanks to Grace Wagner for tagging me.

1:  What is the working title of your book?
Murder on Ceres

2: Where did the idea come from for the book?
My favorite genres are mystery and science fiction. Diane Mott Davidson’s mysteries were my especial favorites. Her characters are believable and engaging. Her violence is done almost gently. For science fiction, I am drawn to Isaac Asimov. He provides believable, thought-provoking science.
I wanted to present humans as I think they are likely to be no matter the technological advances of the future. I want my characters to be accepted as real people by the reader. And I want my characters to realistically live in what is to them the normal universe.

3: What genre does your book come under?
Murder on Ceres is a natural cross-over, a traditional mystery set in the future.

4: Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
I’ve never thought of my characters as being like this or that actor. I will leave that up to the movie people, should it ever come to that.
No doubt, Rafe as the hero will be young and handsome; Terren as his wife will be tall and beautiful; Joe, the sidekick, will be older and ruggedly attractive. Mark, the antagonist, will be mature and charming. TePaki, the pirate will be tattooed and threatening.

5: What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
In a time when Mars is the center of humanity and Earth is literally the Old World, humans will still be humans and murder happens.

6: Is your book self-published, published by an independent publisher, or represented by an agent?
I am seeking an agent.

7: How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
Almost three years.

8: What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
Vernor Vinge’s Rainbow’s End successfully marries science and character. His people seem perfectly normal and live normally in their very different world.

9: Who or what inspired you to write this book?
Carl Sagan is the who. “Exploration is in our nature. We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still. We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set sail for the stars.” – Cosmos
I believe out-migration from Earth is the inevitable and necessary next step for our species.

10: What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
Our hero must solve a murder and bring the murderer or murderers to justice. He must survive professional and personal disasters, some natural and some man-made, from the lovely pearl that is the asteroid Ceres through the vastness of space to the beautiful blue marble that is Earth.

Tagging more Writers:
This I cannot do without permission. So if you are interested in joining in, give me a shout and we’ll do it.