"Every once in a
while a book comes along that captures the universal truths which we all suspect exist but cannot verify until we read them
on the printed page. The Gar Diaries is just such a book; full of breathtaking highs and lows, penetrating insight,
wicked humor, and those universal truths which we covet. The verdict is in: this is the non-fiction debut of a major American
writer, a book that will be discussed for years to come."
J.E. Pitts
Oxford American
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“It's quite
a badge of honor when a writer becomes so associated with his region that we treat him as though he created the place itself:
Faulkner's Mississippi, Cheever's suburbia, Dicken's London, to name a few. To this list, we should add Bourgeois's Louisiana,
for in the prose pieces that comprise The Gar Diaries, Louis E. Bourgeois brings to the reader a place---his corner
of Southeast Louisiana---that is little seen and little known. In prose as dazzling as his poetry, he makes flora and fauna
come alive, and populates his world with people we need to know. Warm and troubling all at once, The Gar Diaries
is a one-of-a-kind book from a true original."
Thomas
S. Williams
Arkansas
Review
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“What happens
to a child who grows up amid the polluted canals and bayous of Slidell, Louisiana? Told in the vernacular of working-class
Southeast Louisiana, Louis E. Bourgeois' memoir, The Gar Diaries, shows us a world where a child, out of loneliness
and fear, tries to eat cockroaches, where men beat their wives unmercifully and take drugs in front of their children. This
is a place where rabid dogs run in the streets and hideous worm-like creatures swim in the ditches. This book is about wounds---emotional,
psychological, and physical---and about the scars that remain after these wounds have 'healed.' More than that, as the wild
chickens at the end of the book demonstrate, it is about survival. Louis E. Bourgeois is a survivor, and The Gar Diaries
is fascinating."
Hiram
Goza
Author of
Birds of Paradise
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“Poetic and pungent
in detail, The Gar Diaries is a collection of stories fiercely wrought at the hand of one who learned life's lessons
early. A melancholy child with sharp self-awareness and sense of purpose, Louis Bourgeois soaks the pages with images of his
Southeastern Louisiana existence as a gar fisherman's son. The gar, considered a trash fish, is a delicacy among the poor
and working class people Bourgeois grew up among. He is like the gar, offering a feast of evocative writing, redolent of violence
and redemption. From the darkest of places, his pen began to move and the words came, weaving the fabric of a boy's coming
of age and a man in a black crepe blazer on his way to fame."
Kathy
Rhodes
Muscadine
Lines
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“The
Gar Diaries is, indeed, a testament to genuine survival. Written as a memoir, the boy-child Lucas, riddled with adult
tribulation, transports the reader through bayous, suburbs, and cities of Southeastern Louisiana to discover his identity
within the societal constraint of the working class. As Lucas matures, he delves further into the hardcore, personal realms
of trial and error. The honest, yet sometimes, decisively derisive, deviant language of author Louis Bourgeois sets the tone
for a smooth, provocative read---as Lucas reaps the whirlwind of good and evil.'
Katherine
Tracy
Thunder Rain Publishing
Corp.
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