When was the last time you actually picked up a book and actually read?
According to a 2021 Pew Research Center poll, 23% of U.S. adults haven’t read a book in whole or in part. To make things worse, only 49% of Louisiana students are reading at an appropriate reading level. Despite a spike in reading since the pandemic began, reading numbers still leave a lot to be desired.
But sometimes all it takes to engross readers is a direct connection to a familiar experience or place. That’s where local writers come in. Writing books ranging in genre, audience and age range, Baton Rouge authors come from all walks of life with a single goal: to help promote literacy and a love for stories among local readers, young and old.
|
|
|
“Reading is so important at all ages and all stages of life, providing opportunities for discovery and life-long learning,” says Spencer Watts, library director at the East Baton Rouge Parish Library. “It keeps us thoughtful and engaged, helps us seek out new ideas.”
Try building your own Baton Rouge-themed bookshelf full of local stories to make you laugh, cry and learn something.
You can start by exploring the local library system, with more than 14 branches to choose from. We asked EBRPL for help us compile a list of a few books with a local lens. Picking one up is bound to connect you to a story worth reading.
1. Terri Dunham’s The Legend of Papa Noel: A Cajun Christmas is the classic Christmas storybook we all know, reworked to fit Louisiana. In this version, Santa rides through the swamp on a boat pulled by eight alligators and a white one leading the path named Nicollette.
2. and 12. Louisiana Saves the Library and Ava’s Place by Emily Cogburn nod to the author’s history in libraries, as well as the initial culture shock of moving to Louisiana later in life.
Telling an almost autobiographical tale in Louisiana Saves the Library, Cogburn showcases the importance of libraries as places of community that are becoming more and more important as their prevalence is downplayed. Set in a fictional town called Alligator Bayou inspired by Livingston Parish, the backdrop will be familiar to locals. “It’s a book that people from here will find very interesting, especially if they haven’t lived here their whole lives and moved here and felt that (shock) of being in a new place,” Cogburn says.
Ava’s Place takes inspiration from Louie’s Diner, a favorite of hers during her time working at the LSU library. Set partially in Baton Rouge and New Orleans, this book is a more fictionalized romance story, while borrowing from elements of her own career working at The Advocate.
Including her 8 short stories written over the past two years, Cogburn hopes to inspire and welcome others by showcasing places familiar to them in her stories. “People really like to open a book and see a place they recognize,” Cogburn says.
3. Richard White’s Kingfish: The Reign of Huey P. Long is the LSU history professor’s biography of the controversial life of Huey Long, the state’s infamous governor. The biography details a man of shameless ambition, from his 1928 election to governor to his assassination in 1935.
4. Reclaimed by Sarah Guillory is a coming-of-age tale about a small-town girl.
Also check out Nowhere Better Than Here, based loosely on the 2016 floods and about coming to terms with coastal erosion in southern Louisiana. The book’s main character must come to terms with the nature of coastal environments being taken away by the changing climate. The book is also educational, with the main character is going through the same experience of learning the reality of Louisiana’s dire coastal situation that many readers are. She hopes that, regardless of whether readers lived through a flood like the one in her book or not, the story strikes an emotional chord.
“I love writing stories where, when you’re reading, you feel very connected,” Guillory says. “I also want people outside of Louisiana to realize what’s going on down here.”
As an English teacher, Guillory hopes that books like hers can help “change the world” by addressing true events like the book that made her fall in love with reading when she was a girl, Fahrenheit 451. “The world looked different through books and through the eyes of other authors,” she says.
5. Ava Haymon’s Eldest Daughter is a collection of poems combining the sensory and spiritual in explosive fashion featuring vivid descriptions of life as a woman in the South during the mid-20th century and a reverence for the natural world.
6. Rannah Gray’s Familiar Evil details the international search for Baton Rouge TV personality and child predator Scott Rogers. It also won 13 national and international book awards for best new nonfiction and true crime, as well as being adapted into a true crime series on the Investigation Discovery Network in August.
7. Gary L. Stewart and Susan Mustafa’s The Most Dangerous Animal of All is the memoir of Stewart, whose 10-year journey to find his biological father leads to his belief that his father is the notorious Zodiac killer. Adapted to a FX documentary series, Mustafa’s gift as a journalist helped to tell a story equal parts personal and true crime.
8. Bone Lady by Mary Manheim—an LSU forensic anthropologist—details how the author’s expertise in forensic pathology helped law enforcement solve high-profile crimes. “I include forensic anthropology, so in a sense, they’re not only following an interesting story, but they are also learning a little bit,” Manheim says.
Manheim has published several books on the subject, as well as creating the Forensic Anthropology and Computer Enhancement Services at LSU and helping to pass legislation to create the missing persons database.
And now she’s brought her forensic minded writing to the fiction world with a series of mystery novels based in New Orleans, the most recent of which is Murders in the City of the Dead. Her other books, despite not being fiction, are very narrative focused, something that Manheim hopes appeals to those obsessed with true crime. “I think in a narrative form, with nonfiction and fiction combined,” explains Manheim, who comes from a family of storytellers. “I include forensic anthropology in (my novels), so in a sense, they’re not only following what I feel is an interesting story, but they are also learning a little bit, here and there, about forensic anthropology.”
9. Cashed Out by Mike and Ayan Rubin is a legal thriller set in Baton Rouge that follows a failed lawyer after his marriage falls apart.
Mike and Ayan Rubin, a lawyer and the coordinator of the Educational Services Division of Louisiana Public Broadcasting, respectively, are a dynamic duo when it comes to writing, even 50 years into their marriage.
Cashed Out won the coveted Jack Eadon award as the Best Contemporary Drama and was shortlisted for the Silver Falchion Award as the best thriller, praised as following the tradition of John Grisham. Written and edited collaboratively by the two, both legal thrillers the pair have written are a look at a slice of Louisiana’s history in authentic a way as possible, with the duo’s first book, The Cottoncrest Curse, spanning the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement.
“Louisiana is the main character in all of our books,” Ayan says.
In using Louisiana in an authentic manner, Mike hopes their novels appeal to locals that find it as true to Louisiana as possible, as well as foreign audiences who find Louisiana to be an exotic locale. The pairs books, in fact, have found quite an audience in Europe with translations in multiple languages. “It has a universality to it, they can identify with the characters and the people and the events,” Mike says. “Often times, writing about specifics leads to universality and that’s what we strive to do.”
10. Three Feet Under by Christee Atwood is a humorous commentary on the midlife crisis. Author of 15 books, including the humorous In Celebration of Elastic Waistbands, the former humor columnist says her newest is different from anything she’s ever written before.
“It’s a story about that longing that we have to be able to talk to the people we lost one last time,” Atwood explains. “It’s a journey through grief to the other side and I call it a combination of memoir and fantasy.”
A personal book for both Atwood and her readers, she describes writing it as almost automatic, where she started with an idea and couldn’t stop until it was a complete story. Since its release in January, Atwood says that readers have shared in the emotional catharsis she felt while writing it where she “cried all the way through,” a feeling she is grateful to share with her readers on their own journeys.
“I believe that reading books, especially from local authors, reminds people that there’s a book in them,” she says. “It’s a wonderful feeling to read books from authors in the area and realize what talent could be sitting next to you at any given moment.”
|
|
|
11. Lindsey Duga’s Glow of Fireflies is part of a series of young adult spooky tales by Duga, whose has had books published by Scholastic.
13. M.O. Walsh’s The Big Door Prize asks the reader a question: What would you do if you knew your life’s potential? In Deerfield, Louisiana, the DNAMIX machine appears, and with a swab of the cheek and two dollars, the device tests your potential. Walsh’s speculative story sees lives upturned, with a series on the way from the producers of Schitt’s Creek on Apple TV+.
A shortened version of this article was originally published in the October 2022 issue of 225 magazine.