cover image Louisiana Voyages: The Travel Writings of Catharine Cole

Louisiana Voyages: The Travel Writings of Catharine Cole

Martha R. Field, . . Univ. Press of Mississippi, $50 (236pp) ISBN 978-1-57806-826-5

Writing under the pseudonym Catharine Cole, newspaper reporter Field undertook a series of trips through Louisiana parishes in the late 19th century for the New Orleans Daily Picayune . Her travels to remote areas frequently included unsafe modes of transportation, emergency farmhouse stayovers and strange foodstuffs; one essay relates an 1891 ferry ride across the Atchafalaya River aboard an unstable flatboat: "One of the horses screamed.... I could see his white eyeball glaring.... I said, almost involuntarily, an abject, cowardly kind of prayer, and wished I hadn't my best black dress on." But even when Cole's buggy is stuck in mud, her love for Louisiana shines through. Cole's affection for Louisiana's landscape and back roads is especially poignant post-Katrina. Although the areas hardest hit by that storm aren't depicted, Cole's writing demonstrates how Louisianians felt then about their homes, and there's a sense that little of that passion has waned in the past century. In the introduction, the editors (both retired Clemson University professors) note that Cole became a celebrity journalist through these literary sketches; it's easy to see why, given her ability to illuminate the "soil, scenery, and life" of each parish. (Mar.)