for the Atlantic this month, Goldberg noted that the authorities are still interested. “The country’s director of public prosecutions, Lillian Shawa-Siyuni, confirmed what officials at the Criminal Investigation Department of the Zambian national police told me,” he writes. “Mark, Delia, and Christopher Owens are still wanted for questioning related to the killing of the alleged poacher, as well as other possible criminal activities in North Luangwa.
“The Owenses’ attorneys denied that Mark commanded scouts and said he was not responsible for their actions, and denied that anyone was tied to a stake or beaten,” Goldberg confirms. Delia Owens also firmly denied any responsibility for the killing of the alleged poacher. “We don’t know anything about it,” she said. “The only thing Mark ever did was throw firecrackers out of his plane, but just to scare poachers, not to hurt anyone.
It is, however, not just her elevated visibility that has drawn journalists back to the controversy in Zambia. The novel’s plot offers some unfortunate echoes of the still-unsolved death. Where the Crawdads Sing concerns a young girl who, mistreated and eventually abandoned by her father, grows up as an archetypal “wild child” in the marshes of North Carolina. The story properly kicks off when the body of a young man is found at the base of a fire tower.