ABOUT THIS BOOK

A vividly described and intensely personal memoir, My Bayou charts a personal and spiritual transformation along the fabled banks of Bayou Saint John in New Orleans. When Constance Adler moves to New Orleans, she begins what becomes a lasting love affair with the city, and especially the bayou—a living entity and the beating heart of local culture. Rites of passage, celebrations, mysterious accidents, and magic all take place on its banks, leading Adler to a vibrant awareness of the power of being part of a community. That faith is tested in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and is ultimately proven right, as Bayou Saint John begins to rebuild.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Constance Adler teaches a creative writing workshop and writes a blog, Emily Every Day. Her writing has appeared in Spy Magazine, Utne Reader, Self, Cable Guide, Baltimore Magazine, Philadelphia Magazine, Oxford American, and Gambit, New Orleans’s alternative newsweekly.

REVIEWS

Funny, thoughtful, and moving—and sometimes all three at once—as Adler recounts her discovery of the city and the life she forged there, before Katrina and after. Above all, this is the work of a writer: virtually every sentence has an interesting idea or turn of phrase, and emanates from a voice you want to keep listening to.

—Ben Yagoda, author of Memoir: A History and About Town: The New Yorker and the World It Made

A personal history that finds its form in a meandering bayou, this moving meditation on the collapse of a marriage details how floodwaters breached more than just levees in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

—John Biguenet, author of Oyster and The Torturer’s Apprentice

Constance Adler plucks prophetic beauty from the rain clouds of the Bayou Saint John, rituals of vodou, and the deep layers of love found in the people around New Orleans. She is a masterful writer.

—Jacqueline Sheehan, New York Times bestselling author of Lost & Found and Now & Then

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

What the Pelicans Saw

Slip into Grace

Dream State

I Am Saved, Again

A Dog’s Life

Then Comes Marriage

A Brief Interlude with History, Science, Wildlife, Mythology, and Civil Engineering

Adrift on the Invisible

Kick Him in the Balls

Words that Float

Innocence Comes to a Close

Flight from the Bayou

Honored Guests

Awash in Grief

Struggle for the Shore

My Conversation with Death

Katrina Litter

Finding the Pulse

Give Us This Day

Getting to the Point

Season of Miracles

Epilogue: The Other Shoe

Acknowledgments

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