Christmas Stories from Louisiana - Tapa dura

No others celebrate the season quite like the Cajuns, the Creoles, and the sundry peoples who populate the Bayou State. Louisiana Christmas is a festive fais do do, whether a buoyant communal celebration around a bonfire on a riverbank or a quiet reverie before a warm fireplace. Snowflakes serve only as trimming in these stories about the basic themes of Christmastime-the expectant birth of a special baby, a family homecoming, and the exchanging of gifts. In these sixteen stories the traditional winter wonderland of icicles and sleigh rides is missing, for Christmas in Louisiana can be subtropical. The grass may be green, the roses still in bloom, and the children in shorts. Featuring stories both by widely notable and by more recently applauded writers, this collection of fiction and memory pieces reveals the myriad faces of Christmastime in Louisiana. Each story in this fascinating holiday anthology is enhanced with an illustration by the acclaimed Louisiana artist Francis X. Pavy. In these stories of the many moods of Christmastime the settings are shaded by dark and light as the spirit of the season colors them. The locales are as various as a back alley in the Crescent City, a maximum-security cell in the Angola prison, or the cotton fields beside the Cane River. As the authors explore a number of universal Christmas themes, they reflect them in the distinctive character of Louisiana and share a sense of more than two centuries of Louisiana culture and tradition. Dorothy Dodge Robbins teaches English at Louisiana Tech University. She has published in Centennial Review, Midwest Quarterly, Southern Quarterly, and Texas Review. Kenneth Robbins is director of the School of the Performing Arts at Louisiana Tech University and is the author of four novels-The Baptism of Howie Cobb, Buttermilk Bottoms, In the Shelter of the Fold, and The City of Churches. Francis X. Pavy lives and works in Lafayette, Louisiana.

Fiction that ranges over the many moods and spirits of Yuletide in the Pelican State