Delia Owens

Delia Owens grew up in Thomasville, Georgia, earned a zoology degree at the University of Georgia and a PhD in animal behavior at the University of California, Davis. In 1974 she and her then-husband, Mark Owens, moved to southern Africa, where they lived and worked for seven years in Botswana's Kalahari Desert before settling in North Luangwa National Park in Zambia. Their Kalahari research earned a Rolex Award for Enterprise in 1981, and in Zambia they tried to reduce elephant poaching by helping poachers earn a living in other trades, such as beekeeping and carpentry.

The couple wrote three nonfiction books about their research and conservation work: Cry of the Kalahari (1984), The Eye of the Elephant (1992) and Secrets of the Savanna (2006); in 1985 they received the John Burroughs Award. Owens published her first novel, Where the Crawdads Sing, in August 2018. It follows Kya, who is six in 1952 when her mother leaves the family and who grows up isolated in the North Carolina marshes, alongside a second timeline about the investigation into the death of Chase Andrews, a local celebrity. The novel topped the New York Times fiction list for 32 nonconsecutive weeks, stayed on it for 135 weeks, and was filmed in 2022.

Start with Where the Crawdads Sing. It is her only novel so far, and it combines a coming-of-age story with a murder mystery, told on two timelines that move toward each other until they meet. Kya's solitary life in the marsh fills much of the first timeline, so the book suits patient readers as much as mystery fans.

Readers drawn to the natural-history side should read Cry of the Kalahari next. Co-written with Mark Owens, it is their account of seven years spent studying wildlife in Botswana's Kalahari Desert, starting in the mid-1970s, when they were young zoologists. The Eye of the Elephant and Secrets of the Savanna cover more of the couple's work.