Cheap Bayou (Book) (Pamela Jekel) Price

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Customer Reviews of Bayou

A Nice Look Back in Time
What I loved most about this book was the glimpse back into the days of early Cajuns and Creoles, and the beginnings of my beloved New Orleans. I enjoyed the story, but Jekel's real talent shines through in her description of the area at that time in history, the layout of the land and the unique creatures that inhabit it. Since the history of the Cajuns is my own, I thoroughly enjoyed this look back into the way their lives were lived.

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A very long letdown
After reading and reading and reading, this book just kind of left off without any real conclusion. For taking up so many pages, I think a story line would have been nice. This book was a waste of good time.

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You call this a family saga?
This book was advertised to me as one of those great sweeping sagas about a particular family in a particular location, and as such it was a disappointment. First of all, the second half of the book didn't even take place in the Bayou but in New Orleans, which was early on described as the anti-bayou. Second, the family you started with was only vaguely related to the family you end with -- no actual blood ties to the orginal woman. The book started out incredibly promising -- beautiful descriptions of the bayou's flora and fauna; the local patois of the residents; interesting character development. But the book quickly loses its direction. The first main character, Olivia, is fascinating but her chidren are dull. Instead of following the branch of the family that stays in the bayou, we follow the branch of the family that doesn't and eventually end up with a character who isn't even related to Olivia in the first place. In a really random twist of fate, this character brings Standard Oil to the bayou, which incidentally has completely destroyed that ecosystem since its beginnings in the early part of the 20th century. So we go from Olivia, who is in love with her bayou and would never leave it, to Manon who doesn't give a damn about it and goes so far as to actually bring about its destruction. Awful, awful, awful, and Olivia should be rolling in her grave!