Good information: Where the Crawdads Sing, the movie primarily based on the high-quality-promoting 2018 novel with the aid of Delia Owens, is now to be had to shop for on digital structures like Amazon Prime, Vudu, Google Play, iTunes, and greater. Bad information: Delia Owens is probably a witness to, or a co-conspirator, in a murder that might have stimulated the ebook!
Let’s returned up. Based on the thriller novel of the equal name, Where the Crawdads Sing follows two timelines. The first tells the tale of a female named Kya (played via Normal People superstar Daisy Edgar-Jones in the film) growing up in North Carolina in the Nineteen Fifties, and the second one follows the investigation of the murder of a nearby superstar in that same North Carolina city. The timelines slowly begin to come together till a wrongdoer within the murder case is sooner or later found out.
Though the film is based on a fictional novel, it’s the form tale that feels lived in and real. And in this situation, the sense that Where the Crawdads Sing might be based on a real tale isn’t absolutely off base. Read directly to discover what we know approximately the actual-lifestyles homicide case that can have probably stimulated Owens.
Warning: Where the Crawdads Sings spoilers in advance.
Is Where the Crawdads Sing primarily based on a true story?
No. Where the Crawdads Sing is based totally on Delia Owens’ fictional 2018 novel. The characters and plot are not based on real people or activities.
That said! There is a wild rumour that Where the Crawdads Sing reflects some of the topics of Owens’ experience with an unresolved murder in 1996 inside the south-significant African country of Zambia. It’s a protracted, complicated story, which has been notably stated with the aid of Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic and The New Yorker. It’s a murder that has never been solved, and Owens continues to be wanted for wondering—as a witness, no longer a suspect—through Zambian authorities.
The simple gist is this: Delia Owens and her then-husband Mark Owens spent an intensive amount of time in Zambia in the ’90s, serving as sort-of unofficial anti-poaching government. A 1996 ABC News segment titled “Deadly Game: The Mark and Delia Owens Story” captured on film the murder of a so-called poacher, who was shot factor-clean even as lying injured on the ground. The sufferer within the video has never been identified, although the ABC phase diagnosed him as a “trespasser.” It became brushed over in the desire to portray the Owens as animal-loving American conservationists fighting for a simple motive.
When Goldberg interviewed the ABC cameraman Chris Everson for the 2010 New Yorker piece, Everson claimed the individual that fired the deadly shot turned into Christopher Owens, Mark Owens’ son from a preceding marriage. Furthermore, Goldberg stated that, in line with Zambian police, Mark Owens helped to get rid of the frame in a nearby lagoon. Delia Owens disputed these details while Goldberg interviewed her in 2010, saying, “The only issue Mark ever did change into throw firecrackers out of his plane, however simply to scare poachers, now not to harm all of us,” and, “Chris wasn’t there. We don’t even recognize in which that occasion occurred. It changed into horrible, someone being shot like that.” Lawyers for Mark and Chris also denied any wrongdoing to Goldberg.
Goldberg similarly mentioned that, though, all 3 Owens are still wanted for wondering in connection to that murder and other viable crook sports in Zambia. Said the Zambia director of public prosecutions, Lillian Shawa-Siyuni, “There is no statute of obstacles on murder in Zambia. In this case, they are all wanted for wondering, consisting of Delia Owens.”
This brings us to Where the Crawdads Sing, an ebook this is—spoiler alert!—approximately a young lady from North Carolina accused of murdering a local celeb in her fictional city. The plot twist? She did! She’s responsible! (The homicide is portrayed as righteous, dedicated to self-defence against attempted rape.) “I read the ebook in 2019,” Goldberg wrote in his current Atlantic article. “I was surprised that its themes glaringly echoed factors of Delia Owens’ lifestyles in Zambia.” One similarity is that a cat in the novel is known after a person the Owens knew in Zambia, Sunday Justice.
Obviously, it’s a stretch to mention that these connections to the Owens’ revel in Zambia imply that Where the Crawdads Sing is based totally on a real story. But it definitely is… interesting to avoid thinking of unsolved homicide and then write a whole ebook about a female accused of homicide who did, in reality, homicide a person! Just something to consider.