What the Bayou Saw- Patti Lacy

My Review:
When  I was reading this I was in the hospital with my cousin and I got asked a couple times, what is your book about?  I started to explain and  the comments back were "Nothing like some light reading!!" There is nothing light about this second book I have read by Patti Lacy. Patti has a great talent when it comes to writing. She weaves a story so well, you either believe it to be true or you know someone it could have happened to. In this story an adult woman is looked up to by her friends and family, yet is hiding a secret that is going to  come popping out  in spite of her best efforts to never think of it. The racism of the time she grew up in shaded her life as well as well as abuse that was so covered up, i don’t think she even wanted to admit it was there. This was a well written fictional book that I think if you like fiction, but like the more meaty books that will really get you thinking, pick up this one! There was only one thing that irked me about the book, and it was about a bible study in the book as for one it has a scene there and never seemed to re-visit anything about it. But the mention of the homeschool moms in long dresses that bugged her and then it mentioned the fact they brought homemade chicken noodle soup and I almost got the impression that was being looked at like a bad thing……I realized that either I better never bring chicken noodle soup to anyone that is homemade or maybe it was just the way they dressed that irritated the character, I could not tell……
It was so minor, but it happened to be the second time in a short time I heard someone else referenced in a negative way because they made a homemade meal and brought it to someone so it sort of had me wrinkling my forehead!
If you get a chance too, check out An Irishwoman’s Tale….it is amazing as well! Both of these books were ones once I picked them up to read I did not stop reading until I was done. When I was done I had to just sit and ponder it for awhile as they are the stop and think type of stories. Amazing work!- Martha

<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_cESuxv-WNX8/SAad94Trj7I/AAAAAAAAArA/Yn05_E4V0fY/s1600-h/wild+card.jpg"><a href="http://firstwildcardtours.blogspot.com/"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5190009307003588530" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_cESuxv-WNX8/SAad94Trj7I/AAAAAAAAArA/Yn05_E4V0fY/s200/wild+card.jpg" border="0" /></a></a>It is time for a <span style="color:#990000;"><strong><a href="http://firstwildcardtours.blogspot.com/">FIRST Wild Card Tour</a></span></strong> book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books.  A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured.  The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old…or for somewhere in between!  <span style="color:#990000;"><strong>Enjoy your free peek into the book!</strong></span><br /><br /><font color="#cc0000"><em>You never know when I might play a wild card on you!</em></font><br /><br /><br /><div align="center"><strong>Today’s Wild Card author is: </strong><br /></div><br /><div align="center"><strong><span style="font-size:180%;color:#cc0000;"><a href="http://www.pattilacy.com/">Patti Lacy</a></span></strong><br /></div><br /><p align="center"><strong><span style="font-size:180%;color:#cc0000;"><span style="font-size:100%;color:#cc0000;">and the book:</span> </span></strong><br /></p><br /><p align="center"><strong><span style="font-size:180%;color:#cc0000;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0825429374">What the Bayou Saw</a></span></strong><br /></p><p align="center">Kregel Publications (March 24, 2009) <br /></p><br /><div align="left"><strong><span style="font-size:130%;color:#333399;"><span style="color:#cc0000;">ABOUT THE AUTHOR:</span> </span></strong></div><br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_cESuxv-WNX8/SlVehlZmxqI/AAAAAAAAC7s/-MjP3tpq63o/s1600-h/pattilacy.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 134px; height: 200px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_cESuxv-WNX8/SlVehlZmxqI/AAAAAAAAC7s/-MjP3tpq63o/s200/pattilacy.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356291262895277730" /></a><br />Patti Lacy graduated from Baylor University with a B.S. in education. She taught at Heartland Community College in Normal, Illinois, until 2006, when she began to pursue writing full-time. She has two grown children and lives in Illinois with her husband, Alan, and a dog named Laura.<br /><br />Visit the author’s <a href="http://www.pattilacy.com/">website</a>.<br /><br /><br />[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXL6qkbEbTQ&w=480&h=295]<br /><br />Product Details:<br /><br />List Price: $14.99<br />Paperback: 336 pages <br />Publisher: Kregel Publications (March 24, 2009) <br />Language: English <br />ISBN-10: 0825429374 <br />ISBN-13: 978-0825429378 <br /><br /><span style="color:#cc0000;"><strong><span style="font-size:180%;">AND NOW…THE FIRST CHAPTER:</span> </strong><br /></span><br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_cESuxv-WNX8/SlVedwyjcEI/AAAAAAAAC7k/U0hHjkRUDOU/s1600-h/what+the+bayou+saw"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 133px; height: 200px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_cESuxv-WNX8/SlVedwyjcEI/AAAAAAAAC7k/U0hHjkRUDOU/s200/what+the+bayou+saw" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356291197233229890" /></a><div style="OVERFLOW: auto; HEIGHT: 307px">Prologue<br /><br />Hold the Wind, Hold the Wind, Hold the Wind, don’t let it blow.<br /><br />—Negro spiritual, “Hold the Wind”<br /><br />August 26, 2005, Normal, Illinois<br /><br />“I’m meteorologist Kim Boudreaux.” Clad in a dark suit, the petite woman smiled big for her television audience. “Katrina’s track has changed.” She pointed to a mass of ominous-looking clouds that threatened to engulf the screen. “She’s no longer headed for Mobile but is on course for the Crescent City.”<br /><br />   Sally Stevens checked her cell phone, then paced in front of the television, as if that would make her brother Robert pick up the phone. She needed to talk to him, needed to know that he’d gotten her nieces and her sister-in-law out of the death trap that New Orleans suddenly had become. Needed to have him assure her, with his balmy Southern drawl, that he and his National Guardsmen were going to be okay.<br /><br />   A slender hand pointed to what must be a fortune’s worth of satellite and radar imagery. “As you can see, Katrina’s moving toward the mouth of the Mississippi, toward the levees . . .” The meteorologist buzzed on, seemingly high on news of this climactic wonder.<br /><br />   Every word seeped from the television screen, crept across the Stevens’s den, and crawled up Sally’s spine. Louisiana had once been her home. Her heritage. What would this hurricane do to the Southern state that she still loved?<br /><br />   A glance at her watch told Sally to get moving. Instead, she once again punched in Robert’s number. If she could just hear his voice, she’d know how to pray later as she stood in her classroom pretending to be passionate about her lecture on the history of American music, pretending to act like it was another ordinary afternoon in Normal, Illinois, while this mother of a storm wreaked wrath and vengeance upon her brother. Her home.<br /><br />   “. . . the next twenty-four hours are crucial . . .” The camera zoomed in for a close-up, focusing on a perfect oval face that, for just a moment, seemed to stiffen, as if a personal levee was about to be breached. “I’m not supposed to say this.” Urgency laced the forecaster’s voice “But I’m telling you. Leave. This is a killer.” The pulsating weather image seemed to confirm her report, a mass of scarlet and violet whirling about an ominous-looking eye. Growing like a cancer. Moving in for the kill . . .<br /><br />   Talk turned to evacuation, log-jammed roads, but Sally barely listened. Years flew away as she studied Ms. Boudreaux’s flawless mocha complexion, the tilt of her chin. The determination of this woman to save her city, or at least its people. So like the determination of Ella, that first friend, who’d taken off for New Orleans. It was as if the lockbox of Sally’s memories had somehow sprung open. Ella, that friend who’d saved her. Ella. And her brother Willie, if he’d gotten out of the pen. Were they digging in, evacuating—<br /><br />   A classical song Sally’s kids had downloaded onto her phone poured from the tiny speaker as the device vibrated in her palm.<br /><br />   “God, let it be—” She glanced at the readout. 504 area code. New Orleans. Robert. Her fingers suddenly clumsy, she struggled to flip open the phone.<br /><br />   Static greeted her.<br /><br />   “Robert? Bobby?” She was shouting, but she didn’t care. “Are you there? Are you—”<br /><br />   “Ssss—got them out.”<br /><br />   He’s out there somewhere, right in the elements, from the sound of it. “Where are you?” Sally cried. “Robert, what’s going on?” Sally pressed the phone against her ear until it hurt. All this technology, yet she could barely hear him, could barely—<br /><br />   The whooshing stopped. So did Robert’s voice. Sally stared at the readout. Ten seconds she’d had with him. Ten seconds to gauge the climate of a city. A city that might still claim as a resident that once-best friend. Sally whispered a prayer as she grabbed her briefcase and headed to class.<br /><br />   ***<br /><br />August 29, 2005, New Orleans, Louisiana<br /><br />   “It’s no use! The generator’s flooded!” A single battery-operated hallway light revealed the faint outline of Dr. Powers, the thin, impeccably groomed physician whom Ella Ward had worked with for a decade. “Ella? Ella?” He groped against the hospital’s second floor wall, his hands and arms made ghoulish by the shadowy dark. “Are you there? Ella? We’ve got to get them out of here! Now.”<br /><br />   Screams, howling winds, and debris crashing against boarded-up windows swirled into a hellish cacophony that tore at Ella’s heart. What were the three of them, she, Willie, and the doctor—no. Willie didn’t count. What were the two of them going to do for sixty-three patients writhing in excrement, gasping for breath, thousands of dollars of ventilators and BiPAPs rendered powerless? Dying, minute by minute, second by second?<br /><br />   Just to keep from falling down, Ella dug her fingernails into a wall sweaty with humidity. She opened her mouth to answer, but no words came out. At Dr. Powers’s side, she’d watched an aortic artery explode, a patient gurgle in his own blood . . . “The scalpel, Ms. Ward?” he’d said. “Suction, please.” With ice-blue cool, Dr. Powers had plucked life out of mangled messes and never even raised his voice. Now his screams pierced Ella’s ears, and her hopes. Even with one of New Orleans’ best surgeons at her side, the prognosis of surviving this storm was dim. There was nothing for Ella to do but close her eyes and beg. “Oh God. Please Spirit. Please Lord Jesus, please.”<br /><br />   Dr. Powers clutched at the sleeve of Ella’s cotton scrub. “Where’s Willie?”<br /><br />   The doctor’s touch and the mention of her brother brought Ella around. Still, she could barely speak for the quivering of her lip. “Where . . . do you think a junkie would be?”<br /><br />   “The . . . pharmacy?”<br /><br />   Even though Dr. Powers most likely couldn’t see her nod, Ella went through the motion. Twenty-four hours ago, she’d decided she and Willie would come here together. Yet even in her worst nightmare, she hadn’t really believed that they’d die here together.<br /><br />   “Someone, anyone, let me outta here!” It was Mrs. Smith, in Room 215.<br /><br />   “Hold the wind, Lord!” Mr. Lunsford, who’d thought he’d die of cancer.<br /><br />   Ella gritted her teeth. One by one, the patients were seeing the storm’s demonic fingers etching out a death sentence, and screaming their response.<br /><br />   “We’ve got to do something.”<br /><br />   Dr. Powers’s words sent a shiver through Ella. Had he read her mind? Or had she babbled without even knowing it? She clamped her hands over her ears. Lord! I’m goin’ crazy! Help me, Lord!<br /><br />   “What’s happenin’, Lawd? Oh, Lawd Jesus!”<br /><br />   “Sweet Jesus! Where are you?”<br /><br />   What had acted as a twisted tonic to incite the patients to a new level of chaos? Was it the howls of the winds, the thuds and crashes against the windows, the doors, the very roof of this place?<br /><br />   “Jesus, oh Jesus!”<br /><br />   Every moan, every scream, knifed into Ella like a scalpel. Nursing school hadn’t trained her for this. Nearly thirty years working at understaffed facilities hadn’t trained her for this. Nothing had trained her for this. With taut fingers, she pulled the doctor close, then shoved him to his knees and knelt by him, her hands flush against the wall. “We gotta pray,” she said.<br /> </div><br />