The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish

by Blackwell, Elise

• ISBN13: 9781932961515
• ISBN10: 1932961518
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-04-05
• Publisher: Unbridled Books

Summary

Set in southern Louisiana in the weekspreceding the great flood of 1927, this novel depicts a place and way of lifeabout to be forever changed. On the verge of manhood and a stone's throw of therising Mississippi River, Louis Proby is pulled between his love of the naturalworld and the glittering temptations of New Orleans, between the beautifulNanette Lan#x00e7;on and a father who no longer seems larger-than-life, between thesimplicity of childhood and the complicated decisions of adulthood. Louis comes of age at a time when thecountry is coming of age. In Louisiana, it's a time when the powerful provethemselves willing to sacrifice the poor to protect their position. As thepeople of Cypress Parish go about their daily lives, bankers in New Orleans areplotting to alter those lives irrevocably. Like so many calamities, the onethat befalls Cypress Parish has both natural and human causes. Based on historical events and narrated onthe eve of another disaster, The Unnatural History of Cypress Parishtells thestory of a young man growing up in a time and place not quite like any other.And in doing so it reveals the complexity of our own relationship to the past.This a beautifully turned novel of love and natural history, married to theshadowy politics of Louisiana, a novel about what manhood means now and what itmeant in the south in the 1920s.

Author Biography

Elise Blackwell is the author of a prior novel, Hunger, which was named one of the "Best Books of 2003" by the Los Angeles Times. Originally from Southern Louisiana, she is on the English faculty at The University of South Carolina.