Bayou Farewell: The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana's Cajun Coast

by Mike Tidwell

Book Overview

The Cajun coast of Louisiana is home to a way of life as unique, complex, and beautiful as the terrain itself. As award-winning travel writer Mike Tidwell journeys through the bayou, he introduces us to the food and the language, the shrimp fisherman, the Houma Indians, and the rich cultural history that makes it unlike any other place in the world. But seeing the skeletons of oak trees killed by the salinity of the groundwater, and whole cemeteries...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375725172
• ISBN13: 9780375725173
• Release Date: March 2004
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 0.79 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.4" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Alarming account

Alarming and detailed account of the LA bayous and why and how they are likely to disappear within our lifetime. Very readable, first-person account and how this disaster has just started to be addresses even after literally YEARS of observations without actions.

MUST READ THAT EXPLAINS THE DEVASTATION AFTER HURRICANE KATRINA

I saw the author of NBC-TV's "Meet the Press" this week and had bought the book immediately...and coudn't put it down. The author explains why Louisiana is in in the awful state that it is..and how the problems are mostly man-made... In this book he explains...what you DON'T know about Katrina and the Gulf Coast: Why was the destruction so severe? Why was this NOT a natural disaster but one created by a century of destructive dike-building along the Mississippi River. He answers the questions many in the media are failing to address: Why is New Orleans below sea level to begin with? Why had Louisiana's barrier islands largely vanished long before Katrina hit? He outlines the only plan that has any chance of saving New Orleans from another nightmare of this sort: Building bigger dikes and cleaning up the debris of the city is NOT a solution. We have to do something human beings have never done before: Harness the great Mississippi to surgically create a buffer of new land between New Orleans and the Gulf. He explains why Katrina is rapidly turning into a September 11th moment for this country: After this hurricane, nothing in America will ever be the same again. He explains why gas prices are now soaring and our economy is about to suffer significantly in our manufacturing and agricultural export sectors. And he explains why another threat, global warming, made Katrina so severe and why all the great coastal cities of the world -- New York, Shanghai, Bombay, Gadansk -- will look just like New Orleans 75 years from now unless we switch soon to energy sources free of greenhouse gases. A MUST READ for anyone interested in what's happening now in New Orleans.

Before It's Too Late

Although I daily witness the results of over-engineering on the Upper Mississippi River as backwaters fill in, wetlands disappear, floods rise higher and faster, and various species take to higher ground (thanks to the devastation caused by maintaining a 9 foot channel), I was astonished by the opening pages of Tidwell's Bayou Farewell. He quotes a Louisian shrimper who claims, "Every twenty minutes or so, a football field of land turns to water in Louisiana." Given recent scandals involving Army Corps of Enngineers book-cooks and their persistent efforts to spend enormous sums of taxpayer money to extend and add additional levies and locks and dams, Tidwell's book offers the most powerful foil in the form of well-researched facts and compelling life stories from those who live in the bayou. If you care about this third largest river in the world, if you care about ecosystems and environment, read this book. I've sent copies to congress members and senators urging them to propose or at least support legislation halting coastal erosion and further engineering of the Mississippi.

This is a Hell of a book Cher

A very well read friend of mine in recommending this book said it is not only a wonderful book about Louisiana and its people, but maybe the best book he has ever read period. On such a recommendation I immediately ordered a copy. And now I see why my friend loved the book. what's not to like. The author highlights the serious coastal erosion problem we have in Louisiana by getting invovled with a lot of the people affected by the pending disaster. He visits them in their homes and rides with them on their oyster and shripmp boats. One gets a real insight into the Cajun culture. After reading the book I realized that I hadn't been down in the bayous for awhile. So, I made a point to get down there and reexperience the unique place that it is. Bayou Farewell is that kind of a book. One thing, though, if you have been consdiering changing carreers to become a crabber, you might oughta read this book first. Crabbing is a rough way to go.

This book will make you sad, and it will make you angry!

A beautiful and sad book about the disappearance of Louisiana's bayou country, and with it, the way of life of the people who live there, the Cajun, Houma and Vietnamese fishermen and shrimpers who provide us with an amazin 30% of America's annual seafood harvest. Thanks to levees on the Mississippi, oil company canals, and other interference with nature, coastal Louisiana is losing land the size of Manhattan every year. The land is sinking, the barrier islands disappearing, and with them go protection against hurricanes, resting places for migratory birds, and a seafood-rich ecosystem. That it is possible to halt the destruction of this habitat is known. The Atchafalaya River, Louisiana's second largest, still pours silt from its mouth to form new land, and small diversion projects are helping. But more and major diversions of the Mississippi, to allow it once again to build up the coast instead of dumping its silt over the continental shelf, must happen and happen quickly before it is too late. Before, in the words of one shrimper, "Dere won't be no more nothin' left anymore, forever".