A vividly described and intensely personal memoir, My Bayou charts a personal and spiritual transformation along the fabled banks of Bayou Saint John in New Orleans. When Constance Adler moves to New Orleans, she begins what becomes a lasting love affair with the city, and especially the bayou—a living entity and the beating heart of local culture. Rites of passage, celebrations, mysterious accidents, and magic all take place on its banks, leading Adler to a vibrant awareness of the power of being part of a community. That faith is tested in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and is ultimately proven right, as Bayou Saint John begins to rebuild.
In the tradition of the modern classics The Tender Bar and The Liars’ Club, Blaine Lourd writes a powerful Gothic memoir set in the bayous and oil towns of 1970s Louisiana. In this rags-to-riches memoir of finding your way and becoming a man, Blaine Lourd renders his childhood in rural Louisiana with his larger-than-life father, Harvey “Puffer” Lourd, Jr., a charismatic salesman during the exploding 1980s awl bidness. From cleaning a duck to drinking a beer, Puffer guides Blaine through the twists and turns of growing up, ultimately pointing him to a poignant truth: sometimes those you love the most can inflict the most pain. Set against a lush landscape of magnolia trees and majestic old homes, haunted swamps and swimming holes filled with wildlife, Lourd gets to the heart of being a Southerner with rawness and grace, beautifully detailing what it means to have a place so ingrained in your being. Just as the timeless memoirs All Over but the Shoutin’ and The Liar’s Club evoke the muggy air of a Southern summer and barrels of steaming crawfish, so does Blaine’s contemporary exploration of what it means to find yourself among the bayous and back roads. Charting his journey from his rural home to working the star-studded streets of Los Angeles as a financial advisor to the rich and famous, Blaine’s story is about the complicated path to success and identity. With witty grace and candid prose, he pays homage to family bonds, unwavering loyalty, and deep roots that cannot be severed, no matter how hard you try.
The Cajun coast of Louisiana is home to a way of life as unique, complex, and beautiful as the terrain itself. As award-winning travel writer Mike Tidwell journeys through the bayou, he introduces us to the food and the language, the shrimp fisherman, the Houma Indians, and the rich cultural history that makes it unlike any other place in the world. But seeing the skeletons of oak trees killed by the salinity of the groundwater, and whole cemeteries sinking into swampland and out of sight, Tidwell also explains why each introduction may be a farewell—as the storied Louisiana coast steadily erodes into the Gulf of Mexico. Part travelogue, part environmental exposé, Bayou Farewell is the richly evocative chronicle of the author's travels through a world that is vanishing before our eyes.
Soon to be a Showtime documentary, Murder in the Bayou is a New York Times bestselling chronicle of a high-stakes investigation into the murders of eight women in a troubled Southern parish that is “part murder case, part corruption exposé, and part Louisiana noir” (New York magazine). Between 2005 and 2009, the bodies of eight women were discovered in Jennings, Louisiana, a bayou town of 10,000 in the Jefferson Davis parish. The women came to be known as the Jeff Davis 8, and local law enforcement officials were quick to pursue a serial killer theory, stirring a wave of panic across Jennings’ class-divided neighborhoods. The Jeff Davis 8 had been among society’s most vulnerable—impoverished, abused, and mired with mental illness. They engaged in sex work as a means of survival. And their underworld activity frequently occurred at a decrepit motel called the Boudreaux Inn. As the cases went unsolved, the community began to look inward. Rumors of police corruption and evidence tampering, of collusion between street and shield, cast the serial killer theory into doubt. But what was really going on in the humid rooms of the Boudreaux Inn? Why were crimes going unsolved and police officers being indicted? What had the eight women known? And could anything be done do stop the bloodshed? Mixing muckraking research and immersive journalism over the course of a five-year investigation, Ethan Brown reviewed thousands of pages of previously unseen homicide files to posit what happened during each woman’s final hours delivering a true crime tale that is “mesmerizing” (Rolling Stone) and “explosive” (Huffington Post). “Brown is a man on a mission...he gives the victims more respectful attention than they probably got in real life” (The New York Times). “A must-read for true-crime fans” (Publishers Weekly, starred review), with a new afterword, Murder in the Bayou is the story of an American town buckling under the dark forces of poverty, race, and class division—and a lightning rod for justice for the daughters it lost.
Selected Book for the Louisiana Bicentennial Celebration, 2012 In the year 1860, Jean-Pierre Cenac sailed from the sophisticated French city of Bordeaux to begin his new life in the city with the second busiest port of debarkation in the U.S. Two years before, he had descended the Pyrenees to Bordeaux from his home village of Barbazan-Debat, a terrain in direct contrast to the flatlands of Louisiana. He arrived in 1860, just when the U.S. Civil War began with the secession of the Southern states, and in New Orleans, just where there would be placed a prime military target as the war developed. Neither Creole nor Acadian, Pierre took his chances in the rural parish of Terrebonne on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Pierre's resolute nature, unflagging work ethic, steadfast determination, and farsighted vision earned him a place of respect he could never have imagined when he left his native country. How he forged his place in this new landscape echoes the life journeys of countless immigrants--yet remains uniquely his own. His story and his family's story exemplify the experiences of many nineteenth century immigrants to Louisiana and the experiences of their twentieth century descendants.
Mr. Clyde sits in the gazebo outside the church. The children like the stories he tells about Old Yellow Eyes; the bayou boogieman that looks for bad children. When the old man witnesses a crime and talks to the police, an old evil awakens.
Winner of the 2016 Best Humorous Mystery Lefty Award and shortlisted for the Agatha Best Contemporary Novel Award, Body on the Bayou finds Maggie Crozat once again using her artist's eye to spot clues and help. The Crozats feared that past murders at Crozat Plantation B&B might spell the death of their beloved estate, but they've managed to survive the scandal. Now there's a trés bigger story in Pelican, Louisiana: the upcoming nuptials between Maggie Crozat's nemesis, Police Chief Rufus Durand, and her co-worker, Vanessa Fleer. When everyone else refuses the job of being Vanessa's Maid of Honor, Maggie reluctantly takes up the title and finds herself tasked with a long list of duties—the most important of which is entertaining Vanessa's cousin, Ginger Fleer-Starke. But just days before the wedding, Ginger's lifeless body is found on the bayou and the Pelican PD, as well as the Crozats, have another murder mystery on their hands. There's a gumbo-potful of suspects, including an ex-Marine with PTSD, an annoying local newspaper reporter, and Vanessa's own sparkplug of a mother. But when it looks like the investigation is zeroing in on Vanessa as the prime suspect, Maggie reluctantly adds keeping the bride-to-be out of jail to her list of Maid of Honor responsibilities in Body on the Bayou, Ellen Byron's funny and engaging follow up to her critically acclaimed novel Plantation Shudders.
This collection chronicles the most mysterious, bizarre and often overlooked homicides in Louisiana history. Drawing on contemporary records and, where available, the recollections of those who provide a coherent version of the facts, these mesmerizing tales detail some of the more gruesome episodes: the rise of the first Mafia godfather in the United States; the murder of two New Orleans police chiefs; the brutal murder of a famous New Orleans madam; the story of a respectable young woman who "accidentally" poisoned her younger sister and is a suspect in other family deaths; the ritual killing of blacks in southwestern Louisiana and eastern Texas; the mysterious death of a young housewife which still generates debate; and the demise of a local celebrity who believed in his own invincibility.
