Where the Crawdads Sing is a 2022 American mystery drama film based on the 2018 novel of the same name by Delia Owens. It was directed by Olivia Newman from a screenplay by Lucy Alibar and was produced by Reese Witherspoon and Lauren Neustadter. Daisy Edgar-Jones leads the cast, featuring Taylor John Smith, Harris Dickinson, Michael Hyatt, Sterling Macer Jr., Jojo Regina, Garret Dillahunt, Ahna O'Reilly, and David Strathairn. The story follows an abandoned yet defiant girl, Kya, who raises herself to adulthood in a North Carolina marshland, becoming a naturalist in the process. When the town's hotshot is found dead, she is the prime suspect and is tried for murder.

Plot

Kya's story begins when she lives in a shack with her poor family in a North Carolina marsh in 1953. As their abusive alcoholic father gambles their money away, Kya's mother and older siblings flee one by one, leaving Kya alone with him until he too abandons her at the age of seven. She survives by selling mussels at Barkley Cove's general store, owned by Mabel and "Jumpin" Madison, who become Kya's good friends. The townspeople know her as the "Marsh Girl".