Where the Crawdads Sing

Chase Andrews is found dead at the base of the old fire tower, having fallen without leaving any tracks or fingerprints behind. The local sheriff treats it as a likely murder and begins piecing together conflicting testimony. Suspicion quickly falls on Kya once investigators learn that the shell necklace she gave Chase — which he was seen wearing the night he died — is missing from his body, and that red wool fibers matching one of Kya's hats were found on his jacket. Kya had, in fact, been away from Barkley Cove around the time of his death, having taken a bus to meet with her publisher in Greenville, returning only the day after his body was discovered. On the strength of this circumstantial case, she is arrested and charged with first-degree murder.

At trial, the prosecution's case unravels under cross-examination. Kya's defense attorney shows that there is no solid evidence placing her at the fire tower at the time Chase died, and that the testimony against her is inconsistent and open to alternate explanations. The jury deliberates and returns a verdict of not guilty, and Kya is acquitted and allowed to go home to the marsh.

Back in her shack, Kya reconciles with Tate Walker, the childhood friend and first love who had taught her to read and stood by her through the trial. The two settle into a quiet life together in the marsh she has always called home, and Kya continues her work as a naturalist and author, having already published successful books on the region's shells and shorebirds. Years pass, and Kya dies peacefully of natural causes while out in her boat on the water, at the age of sixty-four.

After her death, Tate searches through her belongings looking for her will and discovers a hidden box among her most private possessions. Inside is a poem that clearly alludes to the circumstances of Chase's death, along with the shell necklace Chase had been wearing the night he died — the very one that vanished from his body and was never recovered by investigators. The discovery strongly implies that Kya was responsible for killing Chase after his earlier assault on her, and that she evaded justice by using her deep knowledge of the marsh's tides and terrain to leave no trace. Rather than expose her, Tate quietly burns the poem and the rawhide string that once held the shell, then drops the shell itself onto the beach, letting her secret die with her. Kya is buried on her own property, near the shack where she spent her life, closing the story on her own terms.

The verdict and the twist both survive the trip to the screen. Kya is found not guilty in each version, goes home to Tate in each, and in each it is only after she dies in her boat as an old woman that Tate finds what she left behind and learns the jury was wrong.

The keepsake differs. In the novel Tate finds a poem alluding to Chase's murder among her possessions, along with the shell necklace Chase was wearing the night he died; he burns the poems and the rawhide string and drops the shell onto the beach. The film gives him a journal instead — a passage saying that to protect the prey, sometimes the predator has to be killed, with a drawing of Chase beside it — and hides the necklace in a compartment inside the book. He throws it into the marsh.