A favorite novel by “a generous and lyric storyteller” (San
Francisco Chronicle) known for his tragicomic voice and unforgettable
characters.
Welcome to Shiver-de-Freeze, a boot-shaped precinct deep in
the Louisiana swamp, famous for its healing waters and curious fauna. Grisham
Loudermilk is marrying Ariane Thevenot at Paradise, the family’s ancestral
home, and we're here for the wedding. But reason and love, it would seem, keep
little company in Paradise these days: Grisham’s cousin Adlai Birdsong has
fallen desperately in love with the bride-to-be. Adlai’s ill-advised courtship
proceeds even as his daddy, Royce, struggles to recall his past in the face of
Alzheimer’s; as Father Pat McDermott realizes his passion for the mother of the
bride; as the conjoined twins, Tous-les-Deux, train their eyes on Boudou
Fontana, the last of the star-crossed Fontana clan. And just when it seems that
Adlai must resign himself to a prolonged season of bachelorhood, Miranda Ferry,
Grisham’s recent lover, wanders into town unawares. With his signature
tragic-comic voice and cast of unforgettable and lively characters, Dufresne
explores love, death, imagination, and memory.
Publisher’s Weekly: "Imagining John Irving,
William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor or Max Shulman (or all of the above at
once) on peyote juice only begins to evoke the dimension and energy of the
seriocomic fantasies of Dufresne at his freewheeling, frenetic best. In his
latest, a sequel (of sorts) to his 1994 debut novel Louisiana Power &
Light, this talented writer creates rambunctious fun tinged with melancholy as
he revisits the oddball and grotesque characters and exotic trailer park and
plantation landscapes of the Louisiana bayous and byways... Memory, fidelity and destiny
are paramount themes as Dufresne sheds warm light on the caprices of the heart
and mind. The all-out quirkiness of Dufresne's sparkling second novel may put
some readers off, but others will surely think this talented writer's time has
come."
