This a guest post from our friends at Octavia Books, who are partnering with us to host Mike Tidwell for an upcoming presentation and book signing. In partnership with the Gulf Restoration Network, we’ll welcome Mike Tidewell when he returns to Octavia Books on October 20, 2014, 6:00 P.M. to celebrate the eleventh anniversary of BAYOU FAREWELL: The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana’s Cajun Coast.The Cajun coast of Louisiana is home to a way of life as unique, complex, and beautiful as the terrain itself. As award-winning travel writer Mike Tidwell journeys through the bayou, he introduces us to the food and the language, the shrimp fisherman, the Houma Indians, and the rich cultural history that makes it unlike any other place in the world. But seeing the skeletons of oak trees killed by the salinity of the groundwater, and whole cemeteries sinking into swampland and out of sight, Tidwell also explains why each introduction may be a farewell as the storied Louisiana coast steadily erodes into the Gulf of Mexico.Part travelogue, part environmental exposé, Bayou Farewell is the richly evocative chronicle of the author’s travels through a world that is vanishing before our eyes.ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Mike Tidwell is the author of four previous books, including In the Mountains of Heaven, Amazon Stranger, and The Ponds of Kalambayi. A former National Endowment for the Arts fellow, Tidwell has published his work in National Geographic Traveler, Reader’s Digest, Washingtonian, and many other publications. His frequent travel articles for the The Washington Post have earned him four Lowell Thomas Awards, the highest prize in American travel journalism. He lives near Washington, D.C., with his wife, Catherine, and their son, Sasha.
