Read & Listen to an Excerpt of Home of the Happy
+ a little on the anxious purgatory of having a voice in the world
One week from pub day, and I am thinking about Instagram.
I’m thinking about how I, landing on the generational plane as something they are calling a “zillennial”—falling squarely between the millennials and Gen Z—stepped onto the Internet during the chaotic days of early Instagram. As teenagers in those post-Myspace days, we navigated one of the earliest kind of curated “coming out” digital debutante experiences that are now just part of existing in the world in 2025. The captions were moody love songs and the photos were grainy, hyper saturated, and—most importantly—vague. We doled out tiny corners of our lives, carefully-selected and posed to represent stories only we and our closest friends could parse meaning from.
I loved it.
As a shy, socially-anxious teenager, my entire persona was walled up in performative mystery. I wanted my community and my classmates, my tiny little world, to have an idea of me, and perhaps even curiosity about me. But I certainly didn’t want them—most of them, anyway—to actually know me.
In the decade+ since those formative years, my community has expanded, my worldview shifted, my performance evolved, and Instagram looks a lot different. The digital world now rewards “authenticity” and openness that would have been altogether cringe in the 2010s.
Now almost thirty, I mostly find myself resisting that cultural shift, still trying to hide behind that stoicism, that front. It’s so much safer there—where I can keep my voice, my thoughts, my questions, quiet. Safe. I have avoided the vulnerabilities that come with opening one’s heart, except to my tightest inner circles.
Except for this book.
When my dad finished reading Home of the Happy a few months ago, he told me many things. But one thing he said was uttered in a sort of awed surprise: “It’s bold.”
My body—already emotionally charged from the conversation itself—instantly tightened up in defense. He didn’t say it as a criticism, but still, the flight impulse kicked in instantly. To be “bold” goes against my instincts. To be “bold” is to speak, and to say something susceptible to challenge, to critique, and to say it anyway. To be “bold” is to reveal oneself.
As my publishing date approaches, faster and faster, people have asked me how I’m feeling. They’ve said, “I can’t imagine how proud you must be.”
I give the polite answers. “Ah, yes. It’s so crazy!!!!” “I can’t believe it!!”
But the truth is that this purgatory of “it’s almost-here” has me stretched taut on an anxious tightrope between excitement and terror. A dream is coming true. A book, that I wrote, will be on shelves. People all over the country will be reading my words—my interpretation of my family’s story, my investigation, my art. People who have never heard of Evangeline Parish, Louisiana will be—for a time—immersed in the small town I grew up in. This thing that I’ve been living with, privately, for almost a decade will finally be let loose in the world. And on its pages are pieces of me, real pieces of me, laid bare for the world to see—to pick apart, to analyze, to interrogate, to hate. Or to love.
The truth is that I’ve never felt so vulnerable in all my life.
This space on Substack (in tandem with Instagram, actually) has been, this past year, a place to micro-dose in authenticity, to write from the heart, to share more of myself with the world, to exercise my voice. You have all played such an instrumental role in getting me to this day, just by reading, just by listening.
As a thank you, today I’m sharing an excerpt of Home of the Happy—in both text and audiobook formats. I hope you enjoy it.
Excerpt from HOME OF THE HAPPY: A MURDER ON THE CAJUN PRAIRIE
Tell Me Again
I don’t know how old I was the first time I learned of my great-grandfather’s murder, only that I was enough of a child that the telling was draped in the distance of “the olden days.” The mythology, first delivered most likely by my father though I cannot remember for sure, was made louder in the way it was whispered—the way I understood that this is something we do not speak of.
And we didn’t, for almost a decade afterward.
Even today—consumed as I am by the event’s minutest details—a ghost version of my childhood imagination, illustrating the unsaid, lingers over the facts as I know them now: Aubrey, “PawPaw” they called him, floating belly-up, arms outstretched, framed by lily pads and cattails. My father on a tall horse, discovering him. Emily, my mawmaw, spread-eagle, tied by her wrists and ankles to her bedposts, wailing.
Now I know PawPaw Aubrey’s resting place in the Bayou Nezpique was narrow, claustrophobic, more river than lake and more ditch than river. It was winter and everything was brown—the water, the leaves, the mud. My father never saw his grandfather’s body. And MawMaw Emily—well, I know now that she asked the abductor if she could sit upright, ever dignified, on the bed’s edge while he tied her wrists to the frame. I know that she insisted the man handled her “gently,” and that she likely never even screamed.
Still, I can conjure these false scenes as readily as the new ones, as memories. The myth feels as real to me as the truth.
After all, even now, there is still so much we do not know.
***
I am twenty years old before my father tells me the story again. I’m home from college for a weekend, the two of us in the kitchen. I tell him I’ve been writing, and that I’ve been writing about home.
Everyone else in the usually bustling house has gone to bed. It is just us, on each side of the island in my mother’s farmhouse-style kitchen, nibbling on brownies my little brother has underbaked. Dad is still in his scrubs, leaning one arm’s weight against the counter, glasses hanging loose around his neck.
We’re talking about chasing chickens at the courir, about Cajun music and the old record shop in town. About all the things I’ve only just realized the rest of the world does not know about Evangeline Parish, Louisiana. He’s laughing. And then he’s pondering, green eyes suddenly serious.
“You know”—he looks down at his hands—“if you’re looking for a story about this place. A story that needs to be told . . .” He pauses. “Have I ever told you about how my grandfather died?”
A vision arises: MawMaw Emily splayed upon her bed.
“Some of it . . .” I say. “But tell me again.”
Home of the Happy will be on shelves in one week!
If you haven’t already reserved your copy, now’s the time!
Listen in to my interview with Mark Layne on KVPI
Tomorrow (Wednesday, March 26) at 12:30 pm CT, listen in to my on-air interview with Evangeline Parish radio personality Mark Layne at KVPI 92.5. If you miss the time slot, no worries—you’ll be able to find the interview in a podcast format at classichits925.com.
Home of the Happy Book Tour
I’m so looking forward to meeting readers and celebrating this book in person. If you’re in the Louisiana/Mississippi areas, I’d love to meet you at one of my tour events and sign your copy myself.
BOOK LAUNCH —April 1: Cavalier House Books in Lafayette, 5:30 pm—Join me and my dad, Marcel LaHaye, and James Fox-Smith, publisher of Country Roads magazine for a reading and conversation about Home of the Happy, followed by a book signing. Reserve your spot, and a book if you’d like (!), here.
April 2: Garden District Books in New Orleans, 6 pm. Reserve your spot here.
April 3: Cottage Couture in Ville Platte, 5:30 pm.
April 4: Books Along the Teche Literary Festival—Shadows-on-the-Teche Visitor’s Center in New Iberia, 10:30 am.
April 5: Mou Latté in Mamou, 9:30 am. RSVP Here.
April 8: Lemuria Books in Jackson, Mississippi, 5 pm. RSVP Here.
April 10: The Center for Louisiana Studies in Lafayette, 6 pm. RSVP Here.
April 12: NUNU Arts & Culture Collective in Arnaudville, 2 pm.
April 16: East Baton Rouge Parish Library-Main Branch at Goodwood, 6 pm.
April 25: Country Roads magazine launch—at the Conundrum, St. Francisville, 5:30 pm.
April 26: Indie Bookstore Day at Cavalier House Books in Denham Springs, 1 pm.
June 12: Sibyl Gallery in New Orleans with Blue Cypress Books, 6 pm.
November 1: Louisiana Book Festival in downtown Baton Rouge, time TBA
I loved this! It was awesome to hear you reading part of your book! I am so excited to read it! I am a year younger than your dad and never really understood the whole story. I graduated high school in 1983 and was at college do teenage things and definitely not reading the news! As one of your former teachers in high school, I am so proud of your accomplishments! If you become famous one day I will be able to say I remember you as a highly school student 🤗❤️
I am so happy and proud of you!
Mrs Dana Broussard
Will you be having another book signing close to home? Eunice, Opelousas or Mamou?