December 8, 2008
Bayou shepherd of half-sunk souls, Gautreaux returns to the land of the lost and the lonely in his haunting and transient third book (after The Clearing
). Post-WWI Louisiana is a “root-buckled” and “magnolia-haunted” underworld for seedy, drunken mobs and twisted backwoods families. Floating through the chaos is Sam Simoneaux, who, “half dead” after the slaughter of his parents and the later loss of his two-year-old son to fever, undertakes a quest to find a missing girl. Encountering embittered thieves, forlorn vaudevillians and icy bourgeoisie, Simoneaux is a keen observer who can find the one good stitch of humanity in an otherwise sordid tableau, even as his investigation begins to connect back to his family's murders. He is also a refreshingly candid voice, brimming with a lyrical intensity that graces some of the best Southern literature. Though the hasty, romantic wrapup to Sam's investigation and his refusal to exact revenge on his family's murderers—emotionally tepid even through the novel's decisive climax—obscure Gautreaux's finer redemptive tones, Sam's struggle to redeem the memories of his son and parents sustains the book's raw beauty.
January 1, 2009
Swampy hideaways and a Mississippi paddlewheel steamer factor in this story of a 1921 child kidnapping, from Louisiana author Gautreaux (The Clearing, 2003, etc.).
Sam Simoneaux was a baby when his Cajun farming family in Louisiana was massacred by a clan of Arkansas outlaws, the Cloats. The sole survivor, Sam was raised lovingly by his Uncle Claude 's family, yet still felt incomplete —a key concept here. In New Orleans, he would marry and have a son, who died young. In France, arriving after the Armistice, he accidentally wounds a French girl during a cleanup operation. Back in New Orleans, on his watch as a floorwalker in a department store, a small girl is kidnapped and Sam is fired. The missing Lily forms part of a melancholy triptych for Sam, along with his dead son and the French girl. Lily 's parents, the Wellers, are musicians on an excursion boat plying the big river. Sam signs on as a bouncer, motivated by the desire to make another family whole again. A hot lead brings him to the Skadlocks, knavish rednecks living deep in the woods. They did the dirty work for the Whites, a rich, childless Kentucky couple. By revealing their identity upfront, Gautreaux robs his story of some suspense; it doesn 't help that the Whites are bloodless, one-dimensional creations. There will be several treks through the woods as Ted Weller and his teenage son get involved, and an unconvincing climax at a tiny railroad station. Sam is an appealing protagonist, goodhearted to a fault, though his late decision to confront the Arkansas Cloats (beside whom the Skadlocks are sweethearts) is wholly out of character. Where Gautreaux does score is in his depiction of life onboard, the hard grind of breaking up hillbilly fights while the band plays on.
The powerful period detail compensates for the rocky marriage between haunting theme and creaky plot.
(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)
February 1, 2009
A mistake that changes the course of a life is not an unusual literary topic, but seldom is such a level of responsibility taken and restitution made as in Gautreauxs compelling third novel. As the floorwalker in New Orleans best department store in 1921, Sam Simoneaux knows the policy is to lock the store doors when a lost child is not found in 15 minutes. When he fails to implement that policy, kidnappers make off with three-year-old Lily, the pretty and talented daughter of riverboat performers Elsie and Ted Weller. Fired from his job, Samwho understands the Wellers grief, having lost a young son to illnesshires on at the riverboat and taps railroad stationmasters for information to find the kidnappers. His initial error is compounded when he finds Lily and makes a moral judgment he has no right to make. But Sam, the victim of a horrendous crime as an infant, goes to great lengths to right his own wrongs without seeking vengeance for wrongs against himself, even in the face of pure evil. Gautreaux (The Clearing, 2003) again displays fluent prose, accomplished storytelling, and strong characterizations in this paean to the indefatigability of the human spirit. An exceptional novel.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)
January 1, 2009
Swampy hideaways and a Mississippi paddlewheel steamer factor in this story of a 1921 child kidnapping, from Louisiana author Gautreaux (The Clearing, 2003, etc.).
Sam Simoneaux was a baby when his Cajun farming family in Louisiana was massacred by a clan of Arkansas outlaws, the Cloats. The sole survivor, Sam was raised lovingly by his Uncle Claude's family, yet still felt incomplete —a key concept here. In New Orleans, he would marry and have a son, who died young. In France, arriving after the Armistice, he accidentally wounds a French girl during a cleanup operation. Back in New Orleans, on his watch as a floorwalker in a department store, a small girl is kidnapped and Sam is fired. The missing Lily forms part of a melancholy triptych for Sam, along with his dead son and the French girl. Lily's parents, the Wellers, are musicians on an excursion boat plying the big river. Sam signs on as a bouncer, motivated by the desire to make another family whole again. A hot lead brings him to the Skadlocks, knavish rednecks living deep in the woods. They did the dirty work for the Whites, a rich, childless Kentucky couple. By revealing their identity upfront, Gautreaux robs his story of some suspense; it doesn't help that the Whites are bloodless, one-dimensional creations. There will be several treks through the woods as Ted Weller and his teenage son get involved, and an unconvincing climax at a tiny railroad station. Sam is an appealing protagonist, goodhearted to a fault, though his late decision to confront the Arkansas Cloats (beside whom the Skadlocks are sweethearts) is wholly out of character. Where Gautreaux does score is in his depiction of life onboard, the hard grind of breaking up hillbilly fights while the band plays on.
The powerful period detail compensates for the rocky marriage between haunting theme and creaky plot.
(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)