Much feted for his debut collection of stories, The Torturer's Apprentice, Biguenet follows up with a steamy first novel set on the Louisiana coast. The Petitjeans and the Bruneaus are rival oyster fishing families in Plaquemines Parish in 1957, struggling to survive in an environment rapidly falling prey to petroleum companies and their ravaging of swamp and bayou ecosystems. As it gets more difficult to hang on economically, old families begin to slip. The Petitjean family, headed by Felix, has reluctantly turned to "Horse" Bruneau for a loan. Desperate for cash, Felix and his wife, Mathilde, approve Horse's plan to marry their daughter, Therese. Therese scotches that plan by luring Horse to the Petitjean property for a supposed midnight tryst, then murdering him. When Horse's body turns up in a trawler's net, his sons Darryl ("Little Horse") and Ross (with their gentler brother, Rusty, looking on in horror) murder Therese's brother, Alton, who they blame for Horse's murder—since nobody even considers that a slip of a girl like Therese could kill the powerful Horse. Darryl has always hated Alton, anyway, suspecting (rightly, as it turns out) that Alton is his half brother—the fruit of an affair between Mathilde and Horse. After the murder, Sheriff Christovich, an old beau of Mathilde's, manipulates Darryl into letting Rusty work for the Petitjeans, hoping Rusty will talk. But it is Therese who exacts vengeance on the Bruneau house with the implacability of a Plaquemines Lady Macbeth. While Biguenet makes the Bruneaus, except for Rusty, a bit too villainous and Therese a bit too clever for plausibility's sake, his debut satisfyingly penetrates the curtain of gumbo cliché surrounding Cajun culture. (June)
Forecast:Booksellers may expect to build handily on the success of
The Torturer's Apprentice with this juicy follow-up and should certainly capitalize on the novel's regional appeal.
