From Meaning to Desire

The path From Meaning to Desire draws its characters through nine stories, eight set in 1960, along the Red River, from Shreveport to Natchitoches in western Louisiana, to the last in South Vietnam in 1967. The book opens on Lillian Stallings. Shy, missing her deceased father, and at 38 adjusting to premature grandparenthood, she finds her life dismayingly similar to her mother's -- unfulfilled, unengaged, and short on meaning. When she and her husband are traveling to their first visit to see their grandchild, Lillian is traumatized by Lou, the book's other protagonist, who owns a caf and motel near Shreveport. Following the trauma, the visit to the daughter's home goes even worse than feared: Lillian's distress overflows and she flees, fearing that her husband Gerald and their daughter will have her committed to a mental institution. Louis Fontinot, carnival prize fighter, speakeasy bouncer, World War I veteran, and sometimes wrestler of alligators, is also a closet devourer of high quality fiction, a self-identified "e;counterfeit"e; Cajun, and the benevolent patriarch of an extended family of siblings, their families, and the children of his cook and her partner. Especially close are his sister, Marie Lynn -- a librarian who shares Lou's love of literature -- and her son, Marlow, in whom Lou finds a kind of alter ego. Plot and characters emerge from the risks, fears, passions, and complexities of local culture, segregation, civil rights, the Klan, family dynamics, and the emerging love story of Lou and Lillian. The ninth story is a counter spin on the first eight.