"In the tradition of the modern classics The Tender Bar by J.R. Moehringer and The Liars' Club by Mary Karr, Blaine Lourd's Born on the Bayou is a powerful gothic memoir set in the bayous and oil towns of 1970s Louisiana. Coonass: [koon-as] (noun, slang, from the French conasse), a term of endearment and an expression of cultural and ethnic pride. So echoes this all-important definition throughout this good-humored memoir of growing up in the South. A rollercoaster rags-to-riches story, Blaine Lourd's meaningful debut is both a nostalgic send-up of '60s and '70s Louisiana, and a heartfelt portrait of one family's coming of age. In honest, confessional prose, Born on the Bayou transports us to a pocket of the South where Lourd learns how to be a man from the two people he looks up to the most: his larger-than-life father, 'Puffer,' a prominent figure in the oil business (coonass translation: awl bidness), and his successful older brother, Bryan. With an eye turned perpetually toward the