The Marauders by Tom Cooper
Following the BP oil spill in the Gulf coast that devastates
the shrimping economy of Louisiana the men of the shrimping industry find
themselves devastated and desperate to recover.
Now, this low country of
Louisiana is home to a whole different way of life that you and I might be used
to. And desperate times call for
desperate measures they say. The
characters Mr. Cooper gives us are priceless.
We can only shake our head in imagining one armed Gus Lindquist, a down and
out shrimper who keeps his Oxycontin in a Pez dispenser and is obsessed with
finding the sunken treasure of pirates along the coast, particularly that of
Jean Lafitte. Gus finds himself tangled
up in the lives of the Toup brothers, twins who have a huge stand of marijuana
on one of the islands. They are
convinced Gus is marauding their crop and doggedly keep after him with threats. We also have teenager Wes Trench, whose
father is losing his shrimp business but
who Wes can’t forgive for choices made during Katrina. We hold out all hope for Wes. Then there’s Grimes, a native of the area but
who escaped to a new life. He now works
for the insurance companies trying to force the shrimpers to sign settlements
before lawsuits begin. The list goes on
and each person on it is more outrageous to us than the one before.
Of course these people
must all converge at some point and hope to survive. This book, given to me by Blogging for Books, was both tragic and funny and
mysterious and otherworldly for me.
Loved it.
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