Southern Fiction at its best. This is the story of a little girl living in the Marsh of the North Carolina coast. Her mother, then her siblings and finally, her Father leave here to grow-up on her own. She attends school for a day but runs away back to her home in the marsh, where she can avoid the truant officers.
She finally makes a friend with a boy who teaches her how to read. He provides only textbooks about biology and science. She also reads the book of poetry that her mother left behind. He leaves her too, goes away to college and does not return to her. While he’s gone, the local jock woos her and promises marriage and a new life. She gives him a shell necklace that she made, and he promises to wear it for the rest of his life. But she finds he is engaged to marry another girl from the town. So, she rejects him.
The college boy comes back and even though she will not trust him, he sees her collections of shells and feathers from the marsh and convinces her to write a book on the subject. She does and it gets published. With this money, she pays back taxes on her 300+ acre property inherited from her father.
The local jock, drunk, reminiscent of her father, traps her in a local lagoon and tries to rape her. She fights back and escapes but is noticed by some local fishermen.
She’s invited to go see her publisher at a writer’s conference in Greensboro and takes the bus. Everyone notices her, because she was dressed a little differently for the time. While she’s gone, the jock dies, falling off a tower they’ve both been to before. The mother, retrieving his personal effects, notices the shell necklace is missing.
The marsh girl is accused of murdering the boy and goes to trial. But in the end, the jury does not believe there is enough evidence to convict and she is let free. She never returns to the town where she was shunned and accused of murder. She does connect with the college boy and they live a life of research and love. That is not the end of the story.