FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Mike Tidwell knew nothing of the disappearing bayou country when he first visited the Cajun coast of Louisiana, but the evidence was all around him: the skeletons of oak trees killed by the salinity of the groundwater, whole cemeteries sinking into swampland and out of sight, telephone poles in deep, standing water. Thanks to human hands, the storied Louisiana coast was eroding, subsiding, and joining the Gulf of Mexico - making it the fastest disappearing landmass on Earth. Yet no one seemed to know how to talk about the problem. Tidwell, a celebrated travel and environmental writer, decided to begin the much-needed conversation, and this vivid, elegiac book is the result." Tidwell introduces us to the surprisingly varied population of the area: the Cajun men and women who work the seasonal shrimp harvest, the Vietnamese fishermen, the Houma Indians driven to the farthest ends of the bayou by the first European settlers. He describes the food, the music, the culture, and the life of all those who live along the bayous. And under his keenly observant eye, the bayou itself becomes a compelling character - reminding us of how much we stand to lose if we fail to address the problems facing this most vibrant of places.

FROM THE CRITICS

The New Yorker

After the Great Mississippi Flood, in 1927, which cost more than a thousand lives and a billion dollars in damages, a massive network of levees was constructed to tame the river's turbulent flow. The river had been constantly shifting to find the shortest distance to the ocean, thereby depositing a fan of rich sediment into the Gulf of Mexico. As Mike Tidwell reports in Bayou Farewell, these levees, along with other man-made intrusions, have accelerated erosion in the Delta. "The whole ragged sole of the Louisiana boot, an area the size of Connecticut -- three million acres -- is literally washing out to sea," Tidwell writes. As the marshland recedes, a distinct regional culture is going with it. On the Cajun bayou, Tidwell fishes near sunken cemeteries and hitches a ride with a shrimp-boat captain who steers the wheel with his toes. By airplane, Tidwell observes the death by drowning of some of the region's barrier islands, which serve equally as avian habitats and buffers for hurricanes. The marine geologist Orrin H. Pilkey extols the value of barrier islands in the Louisiana Delta, but questions the cost of preservation, asserting that attempts to slow the natural "rolling over" of such islands are futile. "Very large amounts of money will be expended to hold the line in the mud," he writes in A Celebration of the World's Barrier Islands. Delicate renderings of the islands by artist Mary Edna Fraser look like vivid aerial-view paintings but are actually batik prints of the coasts, counterbalancing Pilkey's careful study of the "restless ribbons of sand." Citing the inland transplant of lighthouses, as at Cape Hatteras, Pilkey urges beach lovers not to demand permanency: "The barrier islands of the world are telling us that they need to be free to survive." (Lauren Porcaro)

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. (Mar.) Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.

KLIATT - Nola Theiss

Mike Tidwell is a travel writer who hitchhiked his way down the bayous of Louisiana to the Gulf of Mexico to learn about life among the Cajun fishermen and shrimpers. He discovered a way of life that is based on traditions, hard work, large families and good food, but he also discovered that that life is threatened. The threat comes from the land itself, which is disappearing underwater as the silt and sediment that the Mississippi River has always carried downstream to make the marshes have been diverted as a flood control measure. While there is a plan to save the bayous, it has not been implemented because of money, politics, and reluctance to accept what is obviously, but unbelievably, happening. Tidwell experiences Louisiana by becoming part of it: he shrimps, he eats, he travels, he talks and listens and the story he tells is of a culture and a land mass on its last legs, but a culture and an environment too valuable to lose. KLIATT Codes: SA—Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2003, Random House, Vintage, 368p., Ages 15 to adult.

Library Journal

An award-winning writer on travel and the environment regrets the devastation of Louisiana's Cajun coast. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews