The theme of loneliness is most directly addressed through Kya's experiences. Abandoned first by her mother, Kya is left with deep emotional scars as a young child and looks with anticipation toward a return that never occurs. This abandonment is followed by each of her older siblings leaving home, and Kya is left for a time with a verbally abusive father who often doesn't come home for days. Eventually, he leaves her as well.

The loneliness that Kya feels has no sense of relief. She is rejected by the other kids at school on the one day she actually attends, and people in the town nickname her Marsh Girl; although everyone knows that she is incredibly young and trying to eke out a living using her own resources, no one in town offers to help her. The scorn she faces because of her poverty and crude way of living forces her to live as an outcast. Kya learns to live with the loneliness and to rely on the marsh itself for comfort, often finding solace among the gulls there.

For a while, it seems that Tate will rescue Kya from her life of solitude; she is devastated when he, too, abandons her. She finally becomes intimate with Chase, who is only interested in Kya sexually and uses sex to toy with her emotional injuries.

Because of her lifelong loneliness, Kya becomes fiercely independent, eventually becoming well-known for her art and classifications of marsh life. However, this eventual strong personality trait emerges at a great price due to her childhood traumas and the continued abandonment and loneliness she faces as a young woman.