A wildlife scientist, Owens has published three nonfiction books about her life and work in Africa, and her evocative prose earned her the John Burroughs Award for Nature Writing. Her bestselling debut novel is a magical blending of her acute observations of the natural world and a lyrical imagination. Set on the North Carolina coast in the 1950s and ‘60s, the narrative focuses on Kya Clark, a young woman who grew up alone in the wetlands. Known as the Marsh Girl, she found in nature the nurturance that her dysfunctional family denied her, but as she gets older, she tentatively reaches out to the people around her. Then a man’s body is found in the water and Kya is the prime suspect.