Finding Myself Lost in Louisiana

Finding Myself Lost in Louisiana
Author: Keagan LeJeune
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2023-09-11
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1496847342

In Finding Myself Lost in Louisiana, author Keagan LeJeune brilliantly weaves the unusual folklore, landscape, and history of Louisiana along with his own family lineage that begins in 1760 to trace the trajectory of people’s lives in the Bayou State. His account confronts the challenging environmental record evident in Louisiana’s landscapes. LeJeune also celebrates and memorializes traditions of some underrepresented communities in Louisiana, communities that are vanishing or have vanished—communities including the author’s own. Each section in the memoir is a journey to a fascinating place, but it’s also a search for LeJeune’s own sense of belonging. The book is an adventure and a pilgrimage across Louisiana to explore its future and to reckon with feelings of loss and anxiety accompanying climate disasters. LeJeune travels to Louisiana’s geographic center to learn what waits there. He chases the ghosts of Hot Wells, a shuttered healing resort, and he kneels at the tomb of folk saint Charlene Richard. With every adventure, every memory, he ends up much closer to home.

Legendary Louisiana Outlaws

Legendary Louisiana Outlaws
Author: Keagan LeJeune
Publisher: LSU Press
Total Pages: 326
Release: 2016-03-21
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0807162582

From the infamous pirate Jean Laffite and the storied couple Bonnie and Clyde, to less familiar bandits like train-robber Eugene Bunch and suspected murderer Leather Britches Smith, Legendary Louisiana Outlaws explores Louisiana's most fascinating fugitives. In this entertaining volume, Keagan LeJeune draws from historical accounts and current folklore to examine the specific moments and legal climate that spawned these memorable characters. He shows how Laffite embodied Louisiana's shift from an entrenched French and Spanish legal system to an American one, and relates how the notorious groups like the West and Kimbrell Clan served as community leaders and law officers but covertly preyed on Louisiana's Neutral Strip residents until citizens took the law into their own hands. Likewise, the bootlegging Dunn brothers in Vinton, he explains, demonstrate folk justice's distinction between an acceptable criminal act (operating an illegal moonshine still) and an unacceptable one (cold-blooded murder). Recounting each outlaw's life, LeJeune also considers their motives for breaking the law as well as their attempts at evading capture. Running from authorities and trying to escape imprisonment or even death, these men and women often relied on the support of ordinary citizens, sympathetic in the face of oppressive and unfair laws. Through the lens of folk life, LeJeune's engaging narrative demonstrates how a justice system functions and changes and highlights Louisiana's particular challenges in adapting a system of law and order to work for everyone.

The Night the War Was Lost

The Night the War Was Lost
Author: Charles L. Dufour
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 452
Release: 1994-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780803265998

"Long before the Confederacy was crushed militarily, it was defeated economically," writes Charles L. Dufour. He contends that with the fall of the critical city of New Orleans in spring 1862 the South lost the Civil War, although fighting would continueøfor three more years. On the Mississippi River, below New Orleans, in the predawn of April 24, 1862, David Farragut with fourteen gunboats ran past two forts to capture the South's principal seaport. Vividly descriptive, The Night the War Was Lost is also very human in its portrayal of terrified citizens and leaders occasionally rising to heroism. In a swift-moving narrative, Dufour explains the reasons for the seizure of New Orleans and describes its results.

Always for the Underdog

Always for the Underdog
Author: Keagan LeJeune
Publisher: University of North Texas Press
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2010
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1574412884

Drawing from newspapers, court records, and a decade of interviews and observation, LeJeune offers a penetrating examination of the interplay between legend and place, exploring Smith's own life, this unique historical moment, and the place's mysterious landscape. The book also considers how contemporary festivals and other forms of cultural heritage employ the legend as a cultural recourse. To stay vibrant and meaningful, culture constantly re-makes itself; here, the outlaw occupies a vital role in the re-creation. --Book Jacket.

Lost Boy Found

Lost Boy Found
Author: Kirsten Alexander
Publisher: Hachette UK
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2020-03-10
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1538700573

Perfect for fans of the NYT bestseller Sold on a Monday, this Southern historical novel based on the true story of a boy's mysterious disappearance examines despair, loyalty, and the nature of truth. In 1913, on a summer's day at Half Moon Lake, Louisiana, four-year-old Sonny Davenport walks into the woods and never returns. The boy's mysterious disappearance from the family's lake house makes front-page news in their home town of Opelousas. John Henry and Mary Davenport are wealthy and influential, and will do anything to find their son. For two years, the Davenports search across the South, offer increasingly large rewards and struggle not to give in to despair. Then, at the moment when all hope seems lost, the boy is found in the company of a tramp. But is he truly Sonny Davenport? The circumstances of his discovery raise more questions than answers. And when Grace Mill, an unwed farm worker, travels from Alabama to lay claim to the child, newspapers, townsfolk, even the Davenports' own friends, take sides. As the tramp's kidnapping trial begins, and two desperate mothers fight for ownership of the boy, the people of Opelousas discover that truth is more complicated than they'd ever dreamed.

Louisiana Catch

Louisiana Catch
Author: Sweta Srivastava Vikram
Publisher: Modern History Press
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2018-04-10
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1615993525

ÿA grieving daughter and abuse survivor must summon the courage to run a feminist conference, trust a man she meets over the Internet, and escape a catfishing stalker to find her power. Ahana, a wealthy thirty-three-year-old New Delhi woman, flees the pain of her mother's death, and her dark past, by accepting a huge project in New Orleans, where she'll coordinate an annual conference to raise awareness of violence against women. Her half-Indian, half-Irish colleague and public relations guru, Rohan Brady, who helps Ahana develop her online presence, offends her prim sensibilities with his raunchy humor. She is convinced that he's a womanizer.ÿ Meanwhile, she seeks relief from her pain in an online support group, where she makes a good friend: the mercurial Jay Dubois, who is also grieving the loss of his mother. Louisiana Catch is an emotionally immersive novel about identity, shame, and who we project ourselves to be in the world. It's a book about Ahana's unreliable instincts and her ongoing battle to deter?mine whom to place her trust in as she, Rohan, and Jay shed layers of their identities. "Louisiana Catch is a triumph. In Ahana, Sweta Vikram has created an unforgettable character, strong, wise, and deeply human, who'll inspire a new generation struggling to come to terms with their identity in a world of blurring identities." --KARAN BAJAJ, New York Times bestselling author,ÿThe Yoga of Max's Discontent "In Louisiana Catch, Sweta Vikram brings life to the complex human rights issue of violence against women. Through one woman's journey to make sense of her past and ultimately heal, Vikram shows us that yoga can reconnect us to ourselves, and that by empowering others, we transform our own lives." --ZO? LEPAGE, Founder,ÿExhale to Inhale "Louisiana Catch perfectly captures what it means to be human in a digital world, where support groups meet online, love interests flirt on Twitter, and people get confused with personas. Equal parts tender and playful, moving and hopeful, Vikram's prose connects us with timeless truths about grief and redemption in a satisfyingly modern way." --STEPHANIE PATERIK, Managing Editor,ÿAdweek Learn more at www.SwetaVikram.com From Modern History Press, www.ModernHistoryPress.com

The Book of Lost Friends

The Book of Lost Friends
Author: Lisa Wingate
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Total Pages: 417
Release: 2020-04-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1984819895

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the bestselling author of Before We Were Yours comes a dramatic historical novel of three young women searching for family amid the destruction of the post–Civil War South, and of a modern-day teacher who learns of their story and its vital connection to her students’ lives. “An absorbing historical . . . enthralling.”—Library Journal Bestselling author Lisa Wingate brings to life startling stories from actual “Lost Friends” advertisements that appeared in Southern newspapers after the Civil War, as newly freed slaves desperately searched for loved ones who had been sold away. Louisiana, 1875: In the tumultuous era of Reconstruction, three young women set off as unwilling companions on a perilous quest: Hannie, a freed slave; Lavinia, the pampered heir to a now destitute plantation; and Juneau Jane, Lavinia’s Creole half sister. Each carries private wounds and powerful secrets as they head for Texas, following roads rife with vigilantes and soldiers still fighting a war lost a decade before. For Lavinia and Juneau Jane, the journey is one of stolen inheritance and financial desperation, but for Hannie, torn from her mother and siblings before slavery’s end, the pilgrimage west reignites an agonizing question: Could her long-lost family still be out there? Beyond the swamps lie the limitless frontiers of Texas and, improbably, hope. Louisiana, 1987: For first-year teacher Benedetta Silva, a subsidized job at a poor rural school seems like the ticket to canceling her hefty student debt—until she lands in a tiny, out-of-step Mississippi River town. Augustine, Louisiana, is suspicious of new ideas and new people, and Benny can scarcely comprehend the lives of her poverty-stricken students. But amid the gnarled live oaks and run-down plantation homes lie the century-old history of three young women, a long-ago journey, and a hidden book that could change everything.

Find Me

Find Me
Author: Carol O'Connell
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 544
Release: 2006-12-28
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1101206292

On Route 66, as word travels that children's grave sites are being discovered along the road, the parents of missing children form a silent caravan. They are being shepherded by NYPD Detective Kathleen Mallory, who seeks a killer like none she has ever known-and a child unlike the others: herself.

Finding Myself In The Storm

Finding Myself In The Storm
Author: Brenda F. Keith
Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
Total Pages: 116
Release: 2024-01-15
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

As a young girl, Brenda always wondered why people would act the way they did. She seemed to take to others who seemed to care about one another and watched how they interacted. She was a quiet, shy child growing up in Vincent, Alabama, coming from a dysfunctional family. Brenda was bullied by some of her classmates, mostly girls, but there was one incidence where it was her fifth grade teacher. She changed her mind one day and decided she will not become a victim of dysfunctionality. She learned from her experiences and from other people on how to become independent and live a happy life. Brenda was on an uncharted road and asked God to walk with her along the way and guide her. She worshipped Him, and He walked with her every step she made, even ones she had to correct, but she did and that's because she was on the uncharted road. Brenda is living a proud, happy, and healthy life in New Orleans with a part of her family. The other part lives in Childersburg, Alabama, where she still visits a few times a year.