Kya Clark grows up alone in the marshes outside Barkley Cove, a North Carolina town that calls her the Marsh Girl and keeps its distance. Abandoned young, she learns the tides, the gulls, and the shells far better than she learns people, teaching herself to read and to paint the wild world around her. When a local golden boy turns up dead, the town's suspicion settles on Kya. Delia Owens braids a coming-of-age story through a courtroom mystery, and her zoologist's eye gives the Carolina wetlands a presence as vivid and watchful as any character in the book.