Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cry of the Kalahari | 1984 | Delia Owens | Buy |
| 2 | The Eye of the Elephant / Survivor’s Song | 1992 | Delia Owens | Buy |
| 3 | Secrets of the Savanna | 2006 | Delia Owens | Buy |
Delia Owens’s nonfiction work documents the decades she spent studying wildlife in southern Africa. Cry of the Kalahari (1984), her first book, describes the years she and her husband Mark Owens spent living in Botswana’s Kalahari Desert researching animal behavior with minimal resources and no outside support.
The Eye of the Elephant (1992) shifts the focus to Zambia, where the couple worked to combat elephant poaching in the North Luangwa Valley. Secrets of the Savanna (2006) revisits their African work with the perspective of additional years. These books established Owens as a skilled nature writer long before Where the Crawdads Sing made her a household name as a novelist.