They had long since decided that it would be good for all three of us to spend a little time living outside of Louisiana. They became law professors at Tulane, in New Orleans. My parents were the only ones in the family to leave to go to college and then law school. I love where I’m from, don’t get me wrong, but it’s the kind of town that makes you a little crazy if you never leave, even for a little while. Many generations of the Deveaux family have lived in beautiful downtown Bénouville, largely because there is no other part to live in. Every fifty years or so, everything but the old hotel gets wrecked by a flood or a hurricane-and the same bunch of lunatics comes back and builds new stuff. Everyone who lives there accepts that it was a terrible place to build a town, but since it’s there, we just go on living in it. We do have a neighbor with a two-man rowboat lashed on top of the porch roof, all ready to go if the water rises-but that’s Billy Mack, and he started his own religion in the garage, so he’s got a lot more going on than just an extreme concern for personal safety.Īnyway, Bénouville is an unstable place, built on a swamp.

In my town, Bénouville, Louisiana (pronounced locally as Ben-ah-VEEL population 1,700), hurricane preparations generally include buying more beer, and ice to keep that beer cold when the power goes out.

The news wants us to worry desperately about hurricanes. Not among the residents, really, but on the news. If you live around New Orleans and they think a hurricane might be coming, all hell breaks loose.

The name of the star by maureen johnson