Bayou Farewell: The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana's Cajun Coast [Paperback]

Mike Tidwell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 9, 2004

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This lyrically intense travelogue will provide historians of the not too distant future with a guide to a vanishing landscape and a lost culture. Tidwell (Mountains of Heaven) graphically recounts catching rides on shrimp boats and crab boats through the dark water swamps of southern Louisiana into the heart of Cajun country. Here, among the great blue heron, spoonbill, gar and gator, the reader meets bayou folk-from the honest and generous fishermen, who provide the author with room, board and transport for his work as a deck hand, to the disheveled backwoods healer who intrigues and tantalizes the writer with his shamanistic spells and incantations. It is these portraits of people on the edge of survival, living in a world where the land is sinking into the sea at a rate of 25 acres a day, that truly engage the reader. A variety of ecological factors have contributed to the subsidence of the Mississippi Delta. With good intentions to stop deadly floods, the Army Corps of Engineers constructed a vast network of levees and dams along the river, preventing the annual devastating floods of the past. Unfortunately, this also ended the yearly buildup of silt, necessary for the reinforcement and continued existence of the fragile marshlands in the low country. The nutrient-rich, but light, sandy soil cannot withstand the ceaseless eroding forces of ocean tide and winds. The author's descriptive powers, especially of people, provide the reader with enduring snapshots of a water-bound way of life that is sinking into history.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

An award-winning writer on travel and the environment regrets the devastation of Louisiana's Cajun coast.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; Fifth Printing edition (March 9, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375725172
• ISBN-13: 978-0375725173
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.7 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (45 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #85,943 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a Hell of a book Cher, January 14, 2005

By 

A Southern Reader (New Orleans, LA United States) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Bayou Farewell: The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana's Cajun Coast (Paperback)

A very well read friend of mine in recommending this book said it is not only a wonderful book about Louisiana and its people, but maybe the best book he has ever read period. On such a recommendation I immediately ordered a copy.

And now I see why my friend loved the book. what's not to like.
The author highlights the serious coastal erosion problem we have in Louisiana by getting invovled with a lot of the people affected by the pending disaster. He visits them in their homes and rides with them on their oyster and shripmp boats.
One gets a real insight into the Cajun culture.

After reading the book I realized that I hadn't been down in the bayous for awhile. So, I made a point to get down there and reexperience the unique place that it is. Bayou Farewell is that kind of a book.

One thing, though, if you have been consdiering changing carreers to become a crabber, you might oughta read this book first. Crabbing is a rough way to go.

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book will make you sad, and it will make you angry!, November 28, 2004

By 

mojosmom (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Bayou Farewell: The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana's Cajun Coast (Hardcover)

A beautiful and sad book about the disappearance of Louisiana's bayou country, and with it, the way of life of the people who live there, the Cajun, Houma and Vietnamese fishermen and shrimpers who provide us with an amazin 30% of America's annual seafood harvest. Thanks to levees on the Mississippi, oil company canals, and other interference with nature, coastal Louisiana is losing land the size of Manhattan every year. The land is sinking, the barrier islands disappearing, and with them go protection against hurricanes, resting places for migratory birds, and a seafood-rich ecosystem.

That it is possible to halt the destruction of this habitat is known. The Atchafalaya River, Louisiana's second largest, still pours silt from its mouth to form new land, and small diversion projects are helping. But more and major diversions of the Mississippi, to allow it once again to build up the coast instead of dumping its silt over the continental shelf, must happen and happen quickly before it is too late.

Before, in the words of one shrimper, "Dere won't be no more nothin' left anymore, forever".

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Look At Life In The Bayou (Pre-Katrina), September 13, 2005

By 

James E. Bagley "Jim Bagley" (Sanatoga, PA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bayou Farewell: The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana's Cajun Coast (Paperback)

Mike Tidwell - the celebrated author of In the Mountains of Heaven, Amazon Stranger, and The Ponds of Kalambayi - has written a compelling book on the Cajun coast of Louisiana, that, in light of Hurricane Katrina, could not be more timely. Unbeknownst to Tidwell when he began this expose, the coast was already eroding and joining the Gulf of Mexico, making it the fastest disappearing landmass on Earth.

Tidwell's travelogue introduces us to the eclectic group of people who populate the area: the Cajun men and women who work the seasonal shrimp harvest, the Vietnamese fishermen, and the Houma Indians who were driven to the farthest ends of the bayou by the first European settlers. He describes the food, the music, the culture, and the lifestyle of those who call the bayou home.

The book was intended as a reminder of how much we stood to lose if we failed to address the environmental problems facing this unique region. Due to Katrina, it may now serve as a recollection of what we have now lost.