Junior's Leg

by Ken Wells and Ken Wells

Book Overview

Fifteen years after he tormented fellow students at Catahoula Bayou School, Junior Guidry is broke, drunk, one-legged, and living in a wreck of a trailer on the edge of a snake-infested swamp. He's survived an oil-rig accident that would've killed most men but, with the help of a good lawyer, made him rich instead. But he's squandered his fortune on drink, blackjack, womanizing, and brawling, leaving a wake of wrecked cars and friendships, not to...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375760326
• ISBN13: 9780375760327
• Release Date: August 2002
• Publisher: Random House Group
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.1" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Yippee! Another book in the Meely LaBauve trilogy

Junior Guidry, the creepy bully from Meely LaBauve (2000), takes the lead in this book, which takes place 15 after ML ended. Now sporting a wooden leg, Junior is more despicable than ever, a drunk who finds himself taken on as 'a cause' by Iris Mary Parfait. Herself on the run from the law after she killed a dude in self-defense, she starts trying to get Junior to mend his ways. When he discovers he can get some cash by turning her in - but realizes he might be falling in love with her - things get mighty complicated. Full of Cajun dialect, humor, honest, and most of all compassion, Junior's Leg is a worthy step-brother book to Meely LaBauve.

A Swampy Confederacy of Dunces

Junior's Leg illuminates Cajun culture in the same way that Confederacy of Dunces illuminated the anarchic underbelly of the New Orleans Irish Channel underclass--it's grand farce, black comedy, and a fisheye view of a little (literarily) explored culture all in one. Wells is a gifted story teller and he nails the mannerisms, mores and cadences of his subjects in the way that the best contemporary Irish fiction writers handle their terrain.

We all need some laughs -- and here they are

This is a laugh-out-loud funny book, with the kind of storytelling that makes it hard to put down. It's fresh, original and just plain delightful.

A Good Ol' Tale

The only thing that slowed me down in reading this book was that it made me cry so much. It is a mystery, a tale of the boyuos (sp?), a love story, a story of a man overcoming his weaknesses and fears. I read it in two days. Don't miss it!

Literature as entertainment

I loved Ken Wells's first book, "Meely LaBauve," and was surprised and somewhat troubled that his new book was about the obnoxious bully in "Meely," Junior Guidry. However, Wells won me over in the first few chapters. The story is told through Junior's voice and as a character study, Junior is riveting. The plot is rich with surprises and well paced. Yes, Junior's a drunk and foul-mouthed, but he's also funny and insightful about his own predicament. Junior knows, in the book's parlance, that he's "screwed the pooch" in his relationships, jobs, etc. He vividly tells you, with a kind of mordant glee, how he squandered his insurance settlement from a lawsuit over the loss of his leg in an oil-rig accident. He takes you on his the honeymoon of his misbegotten second marriage to a Cajun honky-tonk angel. (Wells, as he demonstrated in "Meely," knows how to write a sex scene.) A lot of this is laugh-out-loud funny. Wells, though, is a canny writer. His rehabilitation of Junior, through the ministrations of a good if beleaguered woman, is artless. He deals with serious issues in the book--class, race, honor, loyalty--yet Junior's Leg is never ponderous or preachy. It's almost as if Wells is some weird hybrid writer. Junior's Leg is heftier than, say, a Grisham courtroom thriller, but more accessible than, say, Faulkner, though it has elements of both. Or put another way, nobody I know writes quite like him. Beyond that, Junior's Leg exudes a wonderful sense of place--Wells's swampy sector of the Louisiana oil patch seems as exotic as the moon. Do yourself a favor and take this book to the beach. And buy one for your best friend while you're at it.