According to author Ron Thibodeaux, formerly of The Times-Picayune, the book tells the story of the hurricanes that slammed the Cajun communities across Louisiana's gulf coast in 2005 and 2008.
Ron Thibodeaux's new book, Hell or High Water: How Cajun Fortitude Withstood Hurricanes Rita and Ike, will be released June 5, coinciding with the start of the 2012 hurricane season on June 1.
The University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press is now taking advance orders for the book. If ordered through the press, shipping is free. The book also should be available this summer in bookstores throughout South Louisiana, as well as from the usual online sources.
According to Thibodeaux, the book tells the story of the hurricanes that slammed the Cajun communities across Louisiana's gulf coast in 2005 and 2008.
"Although they were major storms that caused unprecedented destruction and upheaval in Acadiana, Rita and Ike were largely overlooked everywhere else due to the spotlight that remained focused on New Orleans due to Katrina and its aftermath," Thibodeaux writes in an email release.
A sneak preview can be found on the press' website here, and on facebook here.
In an excerpt in the Foreward, James Carville writes: "How the hardy people of the bayous overcame that adversity, time and again, is a story that is not well known-but it's one worth telling. The story provides only the latest chapter in the rich and unique history of Louisiana's Cajun people. The survival and endurance of those people and their culture, distinctive as it is, make for a quintessentially American story."
Ken Wells, author of The Good Pirates of the Forgotten Bayous, about Hurricane Katrina, writes: "Ron Thibodeaux trains his considerable journalistic talents and his insider knowledge on two overlooked hurricanes that roared into his beloved home state in the giant shadow of Katrina. . . . Thibodeaux brings writerly flair and deft narrative to these largely untold stories of a resilient folk whose very way of life is under siege. As such, Hell or High Water is a hugely important addition to the canon of the literature of South Louisiana's imperiled coast and the Cajuns whose lives and culture are inseparable from it."