ZACHARY RICHARD, Les Rafales du carême. Shreveport, LA: Les Éditions Tintamarre, 2023. ISBN: 9798987353677

 reviewed by Paul Paré (Cliquez ici pour lire ce compte rendu en français)

Zachary Richard has recorded Cajun and Zydeco music for over 45 years and has won numerous awards and titles worldwide. He has also published volumes of poetry and children's books and has collaborated on several television documentaries. Last year, when he launched his novel, he said in an interview on Louisiana Public Radio that he had been working on it for over 30 years. He had filled a dozen notebooks in his “chicken scratch handwriting.” The pause offered by the pandemic gave him the time to embark on “the marathon that is writing a novel.”

When you combine a new novelist with a long-time poet you find a surprising talent. If you add to the brew the voice of a singer-songwriter with a deep knowledge of Louisiana folklore, there is brilliance in your grasp. That was my deep-felt reaction after just a few pages of Les Rafales du carême, the novel written by Richard. Some 360 pages later, I was certain: the novel is as much a piece of beautiful art as it is a historical contribution.

Richard’s title places his tale perfectly: rafale is an old French word for windstorms that are so frequent each spring in the southern part of Louisiana, and carême refers to the period of Lent which rules the Catholic calendar, starting with Mardi Gras and ending with Easter — major times of celebration and redemption. Thus, the stage is set. The area of Louisiana depicted here is Vermillionville (the parish that surrounds the present-day city of Lafayette) and the surrounding farmland and cattle country situated in the far southern part of the state, close to the Gulf of Mexico, although there are a few instances in the narrative when the action shifts to New Orleans.

The time period is from 1878 to 1890. The Civil War ended in 1868 and, in this novel, it is rarely mentioned. Richard gives us a countryside that has survived the worst of the war and has managed to adjust to the emancipation of the slaves. His cast of characters is composed mostly of Cajun families, with Black Freedmen, and some “foreign” adventurers. Northerners who have moved to Louisiana are referred to as “les Américains.”

The principal characters are Drozin Boudreaux and his 17-year-old grandson André. The elder served with the Confederate forces but rarely speaks of his war experience. Since the war, he’s been busy selling land to the developers of the southern railroad system and concentrating on gaining political power and social prestige. He would like to see his grandson follow in his footsteps, but the latter is entirely involved with the horses and ponies being reared on the Boudreaux farmland. The novel is set up as the coming-of-age story for the younger Boudreaux, depicting his growing awareness of the world around him, and particularly of race relations and his own budding sexuality. However, these concerns are often dwarfed by the larger sweep of Louisiana history that the author seeks to depict.

While plot tension is sometimes sacrificed to this broad view,  Richard’s Louisiana French is a pleasure to read on the page. I found a number of interesting words and expressions, such as the term used to refer to the layout of the farms, “rang,” which is the same term used in the Beauce region of Québec where my parents were from. However, the Cajuns use a literal translation of the English expression courthouse, “la maison de la Cour,” while to this day in Québec, the expression is “Palais de Justice.” 

The title of the final chapter is “Lagniappe,” which the author notes is a Louisiana word that refers to a little something extra, perhaps a special treat shared at the signing of a contract or something thrown in to sweeten the deal. Zachary Richard uses his novel, as he has always used his work, to build curiosity and appreciation for Louisiana’s language, culture, and history. That it also marks an important milestone — the first publication of a French-language novel in Louisiana in over a century — is a “lagniappe” that should both entice and reward readers.