Finding Myself Lost in Louisiana

Winner of the 2024 Summerlee Book Prize for Nonfiction

In Finding Myself Lost in Louisiana, author Keagan LeJeune brilliantly weaves the unusual folklore, landscape, and history of Louisiana along with his own family lineage that begins in 1760 to trace the trajectory of people's lives in the Bayou State. His account confronts the challenging environmental record evident in Louisiana's landscapes. LeJeune also celebrates and memorializes traditions of some underrepresented communities in Louisiana, communities that are vanishing or have vanished--communities including the author's own.

Each section in the memoir is a journey to a fascinating place, but it's also a search for LeJeune's own sense of belonging. The book is an adventure and a pilgrimage across Louisiana to explore its future and to reckon with feelings of loss and anxiety accompanying climate disasters. LeJeune travels to Louisiana's geographic center to learn what waits there. He chases the ghosts of Hot Wells, a shuttered healing resort, and he kneels at the tomb of folk saint Charlene Richard. With every adventure, every memory, he ends up much closer to home.

Author: Keagan LeJeune
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Published: 10/02/2023
Pages: 278
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.85lbs
Size: 8.90h x 6.30w x 1.30d
ISBN13: 9781496850331
ISBN10: 1496850335
BISAC Categories:
- Biography & Autobiography | Cultural & Regional
- Biography & Autobiography | Memoirs
- Social Science | Folklore & Mythology

About the Author
Keagan LeJeune is an award-winning author, professor of English at McNeese State University, past president of the Louisiana Folklore Society, and former editor of its journal, Louisiana Folklore Miscellany. He has collected stories about Louisiana's legends for more than twenty-five years.

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