Hurricane Audrey hit the southwest coast of Louisiana on June 27, 1957. It left more than five hundred people dead, most from drowning or injury but many, especially children, from snakebite. Lots of books are available on the subject. My favorite is Hurricane Audrey by Nola Mae Ross and Susan McFillen Goodson, residents of Cameron Parish, bull’s-eye to the storm. Their dedicated compilation of eyewitness accounts is harrowing and uplifting. Audrey’s legacy, they write, is “the big picture of life and death—and acceptance, so intertwined in these human hearts.”
Amédé Ardoin (1898–1942) was a Creole accordionist and one of Cajun music’s pioneers. Like my fictional character, Walter Dopsie, he was brutally assaulted after a performance for wiping sweat off his brow with a white woman’s handkerchief. His brain injuries led to his death. Check out his recordings on disk or online. “That poor boy,” said Ardoin’s musical partner, the great fiddler Dennis McGee. “Make people cry when he sing.”
Joe Falcon and Cleoma Breaux are likewise renowned in Cajun music circles. Their lives and influence are discussed in many books, including Cajun Breakdown by Ryan André Brasseaux, South to Louisiana by John Broven, and Swamp Pop by Shane K. Bernard. Ann Savoy’s Cajun Music: A Reflection of a People features full discographies of Joe, Cleoma, and just about all the Cajun musical greats. It’s loaded with photographs, interviews, and, because Ms. Savoy, her husband Marc, and their family are brilliant musicians themselves, lots of stuff on the instrumentation, lyrics, and melodies that inform the Cajun tradition. My book, albeit in an offbeat if not outright perverse way, was conceived as an ode to a part of the country I loved as a boy. Ann Savoy’s book is a native’s true love letter.