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

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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.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (March 9, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375725172
• ISBN-13: 978-0375725173
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 4.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #33,247 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

41 of 43 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

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 Before It's Too Late, June 27, 2005

By	K. Fischer (Dubuque, Iowa) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Although I daily witness the results of over-engineering on the Upper Mississippi River as backwaters fill in, wetlands disappear, floods rise higher and faster, and various species take to higher ground (thanks to the devastation caused by maintaining a 9 foot channel), I was astonished by the opening pages of Tidwell's Bayou Farewell. He quotes a Louisian shrimper who claims, "Every twenty minutes or so, a football field of land turns to water in Louisiana."

Given recent scandals involving Army Corps of Enngineers book-cooks and their persistent efforts to spend enormous sums of taxpayer money to extend and add additional levies and locks and dams, Tidwell's book offers the most powerful foil in the form of well-researched facts and compelling life stories from those who live in the bayou.

If you care about this third largest river in the world, if you care about ecosystems and environment, read this book. I've sent copies to congress members and senators urging them to propose or at least support legislation halting coastal erosion and further engineering of the Mississippi.

23 of 23 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

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".