1,001 Novels: A Library of America
Louisiana Power & Light (1994)
by John Dufresne
Monroe, Louisiana
Louisiana: 10/28
One fact I've learned about the geography of the South from the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America. The top of Louisiana is not in line with the northern borders of Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. That particular line runs through the middle of Arkansas and Louisiana doesn't start until about the middle of Georgia/Alabama/Mississippi. Likewise, the vast major of the population of Louisiana lives south of the southern borders of those states- some of it lines up with the Florida panhandle, but most of the important part of Louisiana (New Orleans and environs) lines up with north-central Florida.
I mention this because the northern half of Louisiana only has three titles in the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project and Louisiana Power & Light are one of those books. That makes Northern Louisiana one of the great underrepresented regions of America in this project, alongside Northern Alabama and Northern New York/Vermont/New Hampshire. This novel is about the last of a line of inbred swamp dwellers who is orphaned by his criminally insane father and half-wit thirteen-year-old mother and raised to become a priest, only to abandon that goal when he meets the first in a series of women.
I had low expectations for Louisiana Power & Light, but I was pleasantly surprised by the story.
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