Eileen Sears, a pretty girl from the "Cajun Country" of Louisiana makes her way to Houston where she meets the covert operative Congressional Investigator Roy Randall. They fall in love and he helps her develop a singing career. Randall is called upon to pry into government corruption, mob activity, murder and drug smuggling. Eileen and Roy marry. It is "the second time around" for each of them. Their dedication to and love for each other becomes a "way of life.' Eileen is dubbed "The Cajun Princess" when she sings at a White House reception. Roy and Eileen show over and over that their passion for each other is not diminished by time. Eileen and Roy have a goal in life to "grow old together". Is that lofty goal achieved?

George Reno has been many things in his time: a prankster, trapper, hunter, fisherman, builder of boats, lover of wildlife, minister, father, and husband. But perhaps he is at his best as a teller of stories over cups of coffee. Cajun Grace tells George's story in his own words, beginning with his early years on Pass Manchac in southeast Louisiana where he lived five miles by boat from the nearest road. In this watery cocoon protected from the outside world, George was schooled in the arts of living off the land and learned to read from his mother using a Sears & Roebuck catalog. It was a quiet but lively existence where nature sustained everyday life and God was a distant notion. But when an itinerant Mennonite evangelist visited a nearby community, it started a ripple effect of faith that would reach into George's world and open him to God and a life of pastoral ministry in the Cajun south. George's remarkable life of faith is told here as it was lived, through stories of alligators and fishing ventures, boat-building and hurricanes. Shared with humor and honesty, these are the stories that schooled him in grace.

This insightful book is by far the broadest examination of traditional Cajun culture ever assembled. It goes beyond the stereotypes and surface treatment given to Cajuns by the popular media and examines the great variety of cultural elements alive in Cajun culture today--cooking, music, storytelling, architecture, arts and crafts, and festivals, as well as traditional occupations such as fishing, hunting, and trapping. It not only gives fascinating descriptions of elements in Cajun life that have been woven into the fabric of American history and folklore; it also explains how they came to be. Cajun Country reveals the historical background of the Cajun people, who migrated to Louisiana as exiles from their Canadian homeland, and it shows their folklife as a living and ongoing legacy that enriches America.

Louise Rivard, long before she became known as the beloved Tante Lulu, is a young Cajun woman still suffering from her Big Grief, the death of her fiancé Phillipe Prudhomme during World War II. She has a career as a traiteur or folk healer, a young child to care for, and a wacky devotion to her favorite saint, Jude, patron of hopeless cases, but she is lonely. What she needs to jumpstart her life is a good dose of Cajun Sass. Justin Boudreaux is a young doctor about to embark on what will end up being a world-famous career as a heart surgeon, but he is home on the bayou for the summer. What he doesn’t need to complicate his life is a sassy Cajun girl with an attitude and some crazy ass medical recipes including such things as gator snot. But then, despite his Yankee education, Justin discovers that he still has that god-given talent all bayou-born men have…Cajun Brass. When Cajun Sass meets Cajun Brass, the good times can’t help but roll. Laissez le bon temps rouler, guar-an-teed!

Thirteen-year-old Grace Thibodaux knew that she was a lucky girl, probably the luckiest girl ever. Both of her parents, Joe-Joe and Em, loved her so much. Grace loved them too. Their home was filled with music and laughter. Every day they taught Grace something new. Having Down syndrome, some things came easy to Grace; others were more difficult for her to learn. However, she always thought of what Em said: "That does not define you, Gracie." In other words, Down syndrome was just one part of Grace, like her dimples or brown eyes. Em had a way of explaining such matters: "You can do almost anything if you want it enough, Gracie." Life was good. Then on a December day, in the blink of an eye, the Thibodaux household changed forever. Gracie's beloved Joe-Joe was killed in a tragic accident. Her whole world was shattered on that day. Grace didn't think it could get worse, but it did. She awoke one day, and she could not remember Joe-Joe's voice or his laughter. She thought that she was losing him forever. Grace knew that she had to do something to keep Joe-Joe in her mind and in her heart, and she had to do it alone. She couldn't tell Em; she was already so sad. After careful planning, Gracie embarks on a suspenseful journey that brings life lessons, friendship, and healing.

Music of Louisiana was at the heart of rock-and-roll in the 1950s. Most fans know that Jerry Lee Lewis, one of the icons, sprang out of Ferriday, Louisiana, in the middle of delta country and that along with Carl Perkins and Elvis Presley he was one of the very first of these “white boys playing black music.” The genre was profoundly influenced by New Orleans, a launch pad for major careers, such as Little Richard's and Fats Domino's. The untold “rest of the story” is the story of swamp pop, a form of Louisiana music more recognized by its practitioners and their hits than by a definition. What is it? What true rock enthusiasts don't know some of its most important artists? Dale and Grace (“I'm leaving It Up to You”), Phil Phillips (“Sea of Love”), Joe Barry (“I'm a Fool to Care”), Cooke and the Cupcakes (“Mathilda”), Jimmy Clanton (“Just a Dream”), Johnny Preston (“Runnin' Bear”), Rod Bernard (“This Should Go on Forever”), and Bobby Charles (“Later, Alligator”)? There were many others just as important within the region. Drawing on more than fifty interviews with swamp pop musicians in South Louisiana and East Texas, Swamp Pop: Cajun and Creole Rhythm and Blues finds the roots of this often-overlooked, sometimes-derided sister genre of the wildly popular Cajun and zydeco music. In this first book to be devoted entirely to swamp pop, Shane K. Bernard uncovers the history of this hybrid form invented in the 1950s by teenage Cajuns and black Creoles. They put aside the fiddle and accordion of their parents' traditional French music to learn the electric guitar and bass, saxophone, upright piano, and modern drumming trap sets of big-city rhythm-and-blues. Their new sound interwove country-and-western and rhythm-and-blues with the exciting elements of their rural Cajun and Creole heritage. In the 1950s and 1960s American juke boxes and music charts were studded with swamp pop favorites.

DIVDIVIn this follow-up to Olshan’s acclaimed debut novel, the unforgettable Clara, a tough and deeply caring Jamaican housekeeper, returns to help a troubled friend solve a mystery and deal with tragic loss /divDIV Ever since childhood, Will Kaplan has trusted one person—his family’s Jamaican housekeeper, Clara—to help him get through the pain and tragedy that have all too frequently invaded his life. When his brother, Danny, died suddenly, Clara was there to offer strength and comfort. When Will was confined to a mental hospital, she gave him hope and purpose. Now he needs her wisdom and counsel as never before in the wake of a horrific plane crash that may have taken the life of Will’s dear friend Marie, the mother of his former lover, Peter./divDIV /divDIVWhen he learns that Marie may not actually have been aboard the doomed flight, Will is suddenly faced with an altogether different dilemma: how to find Marie, who apparently vanished while on her way to see him. It will mean an uneasy reunion with Peter, who’s embroiled in his own family crisis. But if he places his damaged heart and troubled soul in Clara’s loving and capable hands once again, Will might just weather the emotional storm that is brewing all around him and emerge a stronger person because of it. /div/div

In 1946, Harry Choates, a Cajun fiddle virtuoso, changed the course of American musical history when his recording of the so-called Cajun national anthem "Jole Blon" reached number four on the national Billboard charts. Cajun music became part of the American consciousness for the first time thanks to the unprecedented success of this issue, as the French tune crossed cultural, ethnic, racial, and socio-economic boundaries. Country music stars Moon Mullican, Roy Acuff, Bob Wills, and Hank Snow rushed into the studio to record their own interpretations of the waltz-followed years later by Waylon Jennings and Bruce Springsteen. The cross-cultural musical legacy of this plaintive waltz also paved the way for Hank Williams Sr.'s Cajun-influenced hit "Jamabalaya." Choates' "Jole Blon" represents the culmination of a centuries-old dialogue between the Cajun community and the rest of America. Joining into this dialogue is the most thoroughly researched and broadly conceived history of Cajun music yet published, Cajun Breakdown. Furthermore, the book examines the social and cultural roots of Cajun music's development through 1950 by raising broad questions about the ethnic experience in America and nature of indigenous American music. Since its inception, the Cajun community constantly refashioned influences from the American musical landscape despite the pressures of marginalization, denigration, and poverty. European and North American French songs, minstrel tunes, blues, jazz, hillbilly, Tin Pan Alley melodies, and western swing all became part of the Cajun musical equation. The idiom's synthetic nature suggests an extensive and intensive dialogue with popular culture, extinguishing the myth that Cajuns were an isolated folk group astray in the American South. Ryan André Brasseaux's work constitutes a bold and innovative exploration of a forgotten chapter in America's musical odyssey.

The wet lands of Louisiana hold many secrets. In this spiritual, paranormal, romance, a young Cajun girl, Marcie, a tomboy raised by her parents on the edge of the swamps, is about to learn some lessons of life from the other side. Several months after the unexpected death of her dad, Marcie starts having ghostly visitations directing her to the middle of the Spring Bayou area among the snakes and alligators to find direction in her life from none other than a recluse that the people of the town call the Swamp Man. Through many trials and tribulation in the bayous and rivers with her childhood friends, this adventure brings Marcie face-to-face with death. Watch Marcie’s struggle with her mind, will, and emotions while she learns lessons from the heart from the Swamp Man and watch her grow and learn the true meaning of life – love.

Teenage Lucy learns about life and love with the help of her friends and saucy Tante Pearl over the course of one hot Louisiana summer before her senior year of high school. Reader's Guide included. Reprint.