Catherine “Kya” Clark

Catherine “Kya” Clark is the protagonist of the novel. She was born in October of 1945 in North Carolina. As a child, she lives with her parents and siblings in a shack in the marsh near Barkley Cove, North Carolina. Kya’s mother leaves when Kya is five years old, and Kya’s siblings leave not long after. Soon, Kya and her father are the only ones living in the shack, and her father becomes increasingly scarce. By the age of ten, Kya is mostly living by herself. She becomes completely self-reliant and is able to live almost completely off the marsh, with only occasional rips to town for supplies. When she is a teenager, local boy Tate Walker teachers her how to read, and she becomes an autodidact, teaching herself about ecology and biology using books form the library. She is largely shunned, persecuted, and ridiculed...