Last One Out Shut Off the Lights

<DIV><DIV><B>"A lightning bolt of a literary debut." ---Adam Johnson, Pulitzer Prize winner</B></DIV><DIV><B></B><br></DIV><DIV><B>"Enchanting and so neatly planed they feel made by time, these stories mark the debut of a writer to watch." ---John Freeman,<I> Literary Hub</I></B><br></DIV><DIV><I></I><br></DIV></DIV><DIV><I>Last One Out Shut Off the Lights</I> is an evocative portrait of the last-chance towns of southwest Louisiana, where oil development, industrial pollution, dying wetlands, and the ever-present threat of devastating hurricanes have eroded their inhabitants'' sense of home. These eleven piercing stories feature indelible characters struggling to find a foothold in a world that is forever washing out from under them, people who must reckon with their ambivalence about belonging to a place so continually in flux. </DIV><DIV><br></DIV><DIV>In a collection whose resonant echoes abound, we meet a reluctant teenage mother who stows her baby in a closet to steal a night out; a spiteful retiree who sabotages his neighbor in the wake of a hurricane; a Pentecostal singer in a children''s theater company who confronts the cultish leader of her troupe; a community of elderly Cajuns who conspire with a family of Sudanese immigrants to hide an escaped cow from the authorities; and a desperate young woman who tries to drag her brother to Mexico for surgery, determined to save his life and her own. </DIV><DIV><br></DIV><DIV>As Lauren Groff did for the state of Florida in her recent collection <I>Florida</I>, Stephanie Soileau demonstrates that Louisiana is as much a state of mind as it is a place on the map. A love letter to the Cajun language, life rhythms, and customs that still make the region unique, <I>Last One Out Shut Off the Lights</I> is also a powerful reminder of the treacherous escape routes that bedevil anyone longing to leave home, and the traps that remain for those who desire to return.<br></DIV>