Loup Garou by Gerred Lee

Background: Several months ago, I was talking to my father about retracing our family heritage which has become a passion of his since retiring from the East Baton Rouge Parish school system as an educator and administrator for many years. While I don’t necessarily share his specific interest in our lineage, I did find myself very much intrigued by the unique memories that accompanied the discussion. After casually recommending he consider writing some of them down, my family and I returned to our present home in New Mexico. Several weeks later, I received a twenty-page email attachment of stories that ranged from personal recollections and adapted folklore, to legends passed down for generations that captured the rich and authentic experiences of Cajuns. From those recollections, I have developed a historical fiction novel titled Loup Garou [wolf-man] in which my father’s tales are interwoven.

About the Book: Loup Garou is a historical fiction novel that is just under 95,000 words. The primary setting is along the Louisiana River Road south of Baton Rouge down to New Orleans circa 1950s through 1980s. Recognizable local historical features such as plantation homes (Sandbar, Poplar Grove, Oak Alley, Laura), institutions (LSU, The Catholic Church/The Ascension of Our Lord, Hansen’s Disease Center in Carville), sites (Cinclare Sugar Mill, Chapel of the Madonna, Congo Square), and characters (Boudreaux and Thibodeaux, Marie Leveau) are featured in the novel. Each chapter starts with an original fable reminiscent of the timeless classics from the likes of Aesop and Fortier, and also stories from family raconteurs [storytellers]. While all but the character Father Gilbert Gauthe are fictional, they too are inspired by a colorful mix of actual acquaintances and scattered memories. Even though Loup Garou wrestles with the familiar personal struggles of forgiveness, responsibility and guilt, it is above all, a story of love and redemption.

Synopsis: Vincent Hérbert is a successful author of a series of books that follow the adventures of Buddy and Theo, an unwitting pair of travelling encyclopedia salesmen, and their accidental but uncanny encounters with area folklore such as Diana of the Dunes, the Pope Lick Monster and the Wendigos cannibals. Despite the fact that Vince was raised in “the place where myth and legend are inseparable from everyday life”, he has thus far avoided imaginatively revisiting Louisiana with his fictional protagonists. Neither has he returned home with his wife Anna and their three young children in large part because of a particular monster that he has never forgotten from his past. Eventually his agent Lydia, because of the marketing potential she recognizes, and Anna, because she senses the presence of a secret ghost that is causing her husband to drift further away from his family, conspire to get him to change his mind. As expected, Vince quickly finds no shortage of local legends for Buddy and Theo to interact with including the Hellhounds of Barataria Bay, The Devil Man of Algiers, The Grunch, the Honey Island Swamp Monster, and the ghost of Mary Glass. But his research, along with seemingly fated circumstances, are also reacquainting him with all the disappointments, mistakes and regrets that he’d run away from so many years ago. Many of those regrets resurface when he reunites with various members of his family especially his sister Genie whom he abandoned after she become pregnant out of wedlock and was excommunicated from the church, and his cousin Laurent who followed him into the sables mouvants [quicksand]. The target of much of his resentment is his deceased père [father] whom, much to his surprise, he discovers he has much in common with. The revelations have only just begun however, as all paths inevitably lead him into confrontation with the legendary loup garou [a.k.a. rougarou in Cajun folklore] and it quickly becomes evident that this time there is no option where both he and the haunting animal from his past survive.