Customer Reviews

Logan's Storm: A Novel

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

Wells is a real discovery. I had not read the other books in his Catahoula Trilogy but I saw a review of Logan's Storm in Publisher's Weekly and decided to give it a try. Wells writes with humor and sympathy for his colorful cast of Cajun characters and with an obvious love for the backwaters of his native Louisiana but what makes this a great book is one of the most harrowing and riveting hurricane passages I've ever read. This book is a real page turner chock with unforgettable characters and scenes. The ending is fabulous and very moving.

An unexpected surprise and joy, well scripted and paced, this book has got to be made into a movie. A Cajun adventure of the heart, with unsophisticated but never crude characters, and a story about not giving up on love. These characters are real people, middle-aged (like me), who love, sweat, fear, laugh, and connive. Logan is a 40 something widower, and single father, who has turned to the swamp for solace and escape, only to find deliverance of a kind he never expected, nor will you. He is a swamp fox, both agile and deliberate, depending on whether he is dealing with insane, depraved, or violent situations, as the need arises. I loved this book.

Now, is Ken Wells related to Rebecca Wells, the Ya-Ya Queen?

Logan's Storm is the third and final book in the Meely LaBauve trilogy. It is set in the time immediately after the original offering ended, and it opens with his hilarious and ne'er-do-well father , Logan, on the run (duh - to readers of the original, this will require no explanation) from the law with a black teenager. Love is in the offing when Logan meets up with Annie Ancelet, who has all sorts of ideas for evading the lawmen.
Logan's storm is an affectionate and endearing character study, full of humor and adventure.

"Logan's Storm," the last in the Wells' bayou trilogy delivers on a scale that its predecessor, "Meely LaBauve" doesn't. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed the first novel about Logan's self-reliant little boy, but "Storm" and the piece before it, "Junior's Leg" are far more interesting. Perhaps I just prefer to read more adult literature.

Wells does a strange thing here. He tells the story of Meely LaBauve with the first book, leaving it open for a sequel. Then he jumps fifteen years into the future with the ongoing adventures of Meely's high school adversary, the reprehensible Junior Guidry. Now, we have an exemplary road movie starring Meely's rolling stone daddy, Logan, which takes place during the middle of the first book. Sound strange? Yeah, I thought so.

The book picks up right as Logan and his young "partner in crime," Chilly Cox have to leave an injured Meely by the side of the rode to deal with the police, while they escape into the night swamp. It's a precarious situation. They decided that Meely would probably get off easy, but Logan and his running mate would no doubt fry. The cops despise Logan anyway and Chilly is a giant black kid who dared to defend himself against the racist white cop, Junior's uncle. Logan tells us his side of the story and we understand, even if we didn't read "Meely," that they were framed.

That was tough to explain. Hope you got it all.

The first hundred pages or so, Logan is really, really an impressive swamprat. A natural hunter and trapper, Logan navigates swampland and fills us in on important nuances about the wildlife, why he does what he's is doing while cohabitating with them, and what he's going to do next. It's like a super-exciting episode of "Wild Discovery," and "Crocodile Hunter." Logan and Chilly spent most of the book crusing around in their canoe and trying to find something to eat.

They meet some interesting characters along the way, like Annie Ancelet, the only woman Logan has really taken to since his wife died years before. And Harris the cabbage salesman is a real hoot to read about and a good friend to our two boys.

Eventually, Logan and Chilly make it up to Mississippi and shack up with Chilly's black relatives. It's a nice existence for awhile, but Logan wants to see his son again before going down and taking a job in Florida. He takes off after a few months with Chilly's family and heads back to the bayou.

There is a scene in "Meely LaBauve" where Logan and his boy find each other for a short time and catch up a bit. It's a great scene, almost exactly played out in both novels, but from the title character's point of view. Very clever.

On his way to Florida, Logan looks up Annie one more time. She offers to take him to his new job when they get news of a terrible storm on the way. They get caught up in it and it almost never ends. Together, they face tornados, hurricanes and a small tsunami. Riveting reading that has its ups and downs in the last 100 pages. That's why it doesn't get five stars. That, and the strange opening that connects the first book. It can confuse some people.

If I were to cast this film, Billy Bob Thornton as Logan and Rob Brown as Chilly. Maybe Gina Gershon as Annie. Lucas Till from "Walk the Line" would be a great Meely.

I read Logan's Storm on a long plane ride last week and enjoyed it very much. This book continues where the other two of Ken Wells' Cajun books leave off, but it is the story of the dad this time, and his adventures.
For anyone who has never read anything by Ken Wells, I think you have a treat in store for you. My brother first discovered this writer about a year ago when he read Meely Labauve. He passed the book on to me; I loved it, gave it to my wife and she loved it too. We then bought and read the next one, Junior's Leg, a real hoot! Tons of fun, some serious laughs in Junior's Leg.
I'm a writer myself (Allergy-free Gardening, Safe Sex in the Garden, etc.) and I love to find new authors whose material is terrific. This is how I feel about Ken Wells and his writing. It is fresh, lively, different, touching, sometimes profound, never preachy, and completely colorful. I keep waiting to see his books make it to the bestseller lists....they deserve to be there, and I think it is just a matter of time. Too good to pass up. Check this book out!

We have long enjoyed defining the American character through our literary heroes. We prefer rough-hewn men, resolute in their own vision of the world, often at odds stuffy conformity, comfortable with their reprobate attitude. Huck Finn exemplifies this allegiance to the rebellious, misunderstood, action-based hero. It matters little if this figure has stretched or broken the law; his illegal behavior usually results from altercations with ignorant, small-minded or prejudiced authority figures. Beneath an exterior of illiteracy or deceptively simple manners reside an elemental decency, a profound dignity and an abiding optimism about the human condition.

The perceptive author Ken Wells understands our perpetual hunger for these larger-than-life heroes, and his final installment of the Catahoula Bayou trilogy, "Logan's Storm," satisfies our appetite. Logan LaBauve, already erroneously pronounced dead as a result of avenging his son's abuse at the hands of a racist cop, confronts nature, faces down bad guys and even finds room in his broken heart to open himself up to the possibilities of love. Logan, through dialogue and action, reminds us of the best aspects of our quest to become genuinely self-made. His unceasing and unflinching confrontation with life's exigencies, messes and hopes serves as a cock-eyed model for even polished urbanites. This man lives large, loves life and doesn't hesitate to squeeze living for all that it's worth.

"Logan's Storm" is actually less a novel than it is three extended vignettes. Each vignette serves as a means through which Logan's character is tested, fortified and sublimely altered. What results is a bayou character who is a loyal friend, savvy con-artist, expert storyteller and redoubtable champion of little old ladies and stricken children in distress. This swamp superman throws out Cajun metaphors with the same grace he demonstrates when he teases a meal out of bayou critters. He knows exactly how much bilge he can safely swallow from adversaries and precisely when to strike back. Though Ken Wells moves his story with breathtaking confidence, he never forgets why the reader will rapidly turn each page.

Unfortunately, the last two vignettes don't carry the power and promise of the first. We first meet Logan during his sojourn in a dangerous swamp, on the lam from prejudiced officers who'd like nothing better than to lay their hands on not only Logan, but his son's African-American friend Chilly. The author paints a lush and absorbing physical and emotional protrait of two men struggling for survival under extreme circumstances. The second vignette borrows heavily from Mark Twain, in both style and content. Here Logan outwits a professorial villain, whose flowery elocution masks a pathetically craven heart. This melodramatic chestnut of outlaws outfoxing other outlaws is saved only by Wells' love of his characters, his engaging use of Cajun patois and his keen sense of irony. The final vignette, featuring an overpowering hurricane, blows itself out from predictablility. It is as if the author himself became exhuasted from the excesses of his own writing.

"Logan's Storm" is cause, however, for rejoicing. Its author, Ken Wells relishes spinning a good tale and is a marvelous scene setter. Logan LeBauve, podnah, will happily find his own niche in our national pantheon of authentic American heroes.

Of the Wells triad, I enjoyed this story the most. I was so pleased to see the tender parts of Logan, and the descriptions and characterizations were complete and rang true. The storm was presented in mythic proportions, but anyone who has survived a hurricane will understand this as a very accurate representation. I have enjoyed a lot of Southern literature--though some was damned silly--but this was culturally accurate and the yarn was worth reading.