Ma’s depar­ture in the sum­mer of 1952 was a turn­ing point for six-year-old Kya Clark, a moment etched into the qui­et, sti­fling heat of the North Car­oli­na marsh­lands. The air, thick with humid­i­ty, seemed to press down upon the land, as if nature itself shared in the weight of Kya’s loss. Her moth­er, dressed in her only pair of good shoes and car­ry­ing a blue train case, walked away from the shack with­out a word, leav­ing Kya to watch her van­ish into the hori­zon. The sense of aban­don­ment that Kya expe­ri­enced in that moment was com­pound­ed by her con­fu­sion, for she was too young to com­pre­hend the per­ma­nence of her moth­er’s depar­ture. Her heart, still inno­cent and trust­ing, failed to under­stand the final­i­ty in the absence of a good­bye. The envi­ron­ment, a mix­ture of earthy smells, was the only con­stant, but it felt more like a prison than a refuge as Kya stood there, her small fig­ure dwarfed by the tow­er­ing oaks and pal­met­tos that sur­round­ed their shack.

The marsh, which had become both home and bat­tle­ground for Kya’s fam­i­ly, had long been referred to as the “Grave­yard of the Atlantic,” a place that had seen many souls come and go, each per­son run­ning from something—whether it be a crim­i­nal past or a des­per­ate need for escape. The swamp’s mys­te­ri­ous, murky waters pro­vid­ed both a retreat from the rest of the world and a place where secrets were buried deep beneath the sur­face. This land had its own rules, the laws of sur­vival being passed from one gen­er­a­tion to the next, learned through hard­ship and neces­si­ty. Kya’s fam­i­ly was no excep­tion to the harsh­ness of the envi­ron­ment, and while they sought shel­ter there, they also faced the per­ilous dan­gers that came with liv­ing on the edge of soci­ety. It was in this swampy wilder­ness that Kya found her­self both shel­tered and trapped, caught between the demands of sur­vival and the iso­la­tion of being cast aside.

With the depar­ture of her moth­er, Kya’s life took a dras­tic turn. The insta­bil­i­ty that came with Ma’s absence left a gap­ing hole in the small fam­i­ly, and Kya and her sib­lings were forced to adapt quick­ly, try­ing to make sense of their cir­cum­stances. Their father, who had already been emo­tion­al­ly dis­tant before Ma’s exit, remained large­ly absent, both phys­i­cal­ly and emo­tion­al­ly. This left Kya to nav­i­gate her own world, and it was here, in her inno­cence, that she began to under­stand the unspo­ken rules of sur­vival. Jodie, her old­er broth­er, tried to hold on to the hope that their moth­er might return, but the real­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion set in when he too began to with­draw, strug­gling with the emo­tion­al toll of being aban­doned. The small fam­i­ly that once had a sense of uni­ty was now drift­ing apart, each mem­ber grap­pling with their own ver­sion of loss and lone­li­ness.

Kya’s world, once a space filled with the warmth of fam­i­ly, now became a place of pro­found iso­la­tion. As she took over more respon­si­bil­i­ties around the house, from prepar­ing meals to clean­ing the shack, her rela­tion­ship with the marsh­land deep­ened. The land­scape became her sanc­tu­ary and her teacher, but also a con­stant reminder of what she had lost. The marsh’s rhythms became the back­drop to her exis­tence, offer­ing a strange sense of peace while also demand­ing a resilience from her that no child should have to face. The sto­ry begins to shift as Kya’s con­nec­tion to the land becomes not just a mat­ter of sur­vival, but also an emo­tion­al teth­er to a world that had large­ly reject­ed her. The marsh, both her refuge and her cru­cible, would shape her into some­one who had learned to sur­vive in a world where aban­don­ment and neglect were com­mon­place, yet where the beau­ty of nature offered moments of solace amidst the hard­ship.

As Kya nav­i­gates her new, harsh real­i­ty, the stark land­scape of the marsh becomes a mir­ror for her own jour­ney through aban­don­ment and resilience. In this unfor­giv­ing world, Kya must learn to depend on her­self, find­ing solace not in the warmth of a home, but in the vast, untamed wilder­ness around her. The land becomes both her teacher and her pro­tec­tor, offer­ing her the tools she needs to sur­vive, though at times, it feels as though the weight of her iso­la­tion will drown her. Yet, through it all, Kya’s con­nec­tion to the marsh teach­es her not just how to sur­vive, but how to hold onto hope and beau­ty, even in the dark­est times.