Swamp songs

the long version

"Feeding off the otherworldly mythos of New Orleans and the surrounding southern swampland, St. Germain stirs up the past - both her own and Louisiana's - to create Swamp Songs, a memoir that bursts with pain and redemption. From the shores of Lake Pontchartrain to the streets of New Orleans during Mardi Gras to the Cajun prairies of French Louisiana, these essays taste of loss: the loss of wild open places papered over with fast food restaurants and retail stores, the loss of father and brother to the embrace of addiction, the loss of self through risk and rebellion. And yet the leaven of hope works throughout to raise the possibility of salvation found speaking truthfully about our lives."--BOOK JACKET.