Who is going to read the audiobook?
Plus a discount if you pre-order today . . .
Hey friends, I know it’s been awhile.
The course of the last month has been a glorious and full-hearted whirlwind of celebrations—a quiet, gentle weekend on Toledo Bend to celebrate four years of marriage; a journey to Jackson, MS to contemplate literary legacies and explore the impressive culinary scene arising there; a stop at the Louisiana Book Festival, where I spent time in some of the first writing workshops I’ve taken in years; the three-day Food & Wine Festival in St. Francisville (I’m still recovering from that hangover); and my first major hosting endeavor at my home, where 60+ people crowded onto my patio and in my kitchen to celebrate a friend’s baby on the way. Plus parties for engagements, more babies, birthdays, a wedding. Thanksgiving. Doctors’ appointments. Treating the dog’s ear infection from swimming at Toledo Bend. Clogged cast iron pipes in this old house (as a certain wild cat tycoon once said, “I will never financially recover from this”). Hell, it’s not even Christmas yet.
As much as the chronic anxiety is ever-hovering, that draw to return to my precious writing time, to create something, anything—and as many things as I’ve begun, but have yet to finish—I’ve also been working to sometimes just let life take up all the space. At least for a little while.
That said, I am working on something for this substack, something researched and personal and true, but it will need a few more days. Perhaps I’ll wrap it up this upcoming weekend—the first in months where I don’t have a single obligation. I won’t make promises, but one can dream.
In the meantime, I wanted to share the exciting news that my team at Mariner Books has officially cast the narrator for Home of the Happy’s audiobook!
I’m thrilled to have actress and director Christine Lakin take on my voice in this deeply-personal story. You might recognize Christine as “Al” Lambert from the 1990s sitcom Step by Step, Joyce Kinney in Family Guy, as well as from films like Reefer Madness and You Again. In more recent years, she’s worked as a director on shows like ABC’s The Goldbergs, Disney’s High School Musical: The Musical television series, and more. Since 2013, she has narrated hundreds of audiobooks, including thrillers by James Patterson, David Baldacci, Michael Connelly, and Minka Kent—not to mention bestselling authors like Abby Jimenez and Lisa Wingate, and Reese’s Book Club Pick Ally Condie’s The Unwedding.
I know, I know . . . those of you from home might be wondering: what about the Cajun accent? Fear not! One of my book-tasks to complete over the next few weeks is to provide a set of audio/video examples for Christine (who while not Cajun, is a Southern girl) and the audio team to study as they work to recreate the voices of Evangeline Parish. If you have advice to offer her, drop it in the comments—OR send me your best example of a Cajun accent via email :)
If you are an audiobook fanatic, now is a FANTASTIC time to pre-order the Home of the Happy audiobook, as it is currently 56% off on Audible! Grab it before the sale ends at end of day on Sunday, December 8!
And if you still need a little more convincing to pre-order the book itself, don’t just take my word for it. Over the past several weeks, several authors who I admire deeply have weighed in on Home of the Happy. (I know, I pinch myself every single day when I read them.) Their thoughts to follow:
“In an impressive feat of both memoir and original reporting, Jordan LaHaye Fontenot has cast a reporter’s gaze on her own family’s buried secrets. But the real value to Home of the Happy lies beyond the brutal crime at its center, in showing us Acadiana and its people as we’ve never seen them before—mired in complexity, rife with beauty, and haunted by injustice.” — Walter Isaacson
"Riveting and atmospheric, Home of the Happy is also a heartfelt grappling with a trauma in the author’s family and her attempts to unravel its secrets once and for all. LaHaye Fontenot’s writing is urgent, fueled not just by a desire for justice but by love for her ancestors and the Cajun community of south Louisiana. A must-read for true crime and mystery fans." — Ana Reyes, New York Times bestselling author of The House in the Pines
“Simultaneously lurid and lyrical, gothic and graceful, surreal and serene. . . [Home of the Happy is] memoir, reportage, and investigative journalism, wrapped in a propulsive narrative that tells the tale of a family and a place across time.” — James Fox-Smith, publisher of Country Roads
"No one wants to belong to the murdered great-grandfathers club, but I feel better knowing that Jordan LaHaye Fontenot is here with me, tackling generational trauma and secrecy with tenderness, ethics, and the precision of a surgeon. Home of the Happy is true crime at its best. I simply cannot fathom how LaHaye Fontenot not only conducted her own investigation of her great-grandfather’s murder, but braided it with stirring personal and historical anecdotes into a taut and thrilling masterpiece. I absolutely inhaled it." — Ruth Madievsky, bestselling author of All-Night Pharmacy
"Jordan LaHaye's Home of the Happy is more than an expertly reported exploration of the murder of her great-grandfather ; it opens a lens onto one of the most profoundly unique and troubled geographical regions in America where a string of tragedies —some of which befall LaHaye's family after her great-grandfather's killing —and economic calamities almost tangibly hang in the air, like the thick toxins spewed out by its chemical plants" — Ethan Brown, New York Times bestselling author of Murder in the Bayou
"Relentlessly reported, intricately crafted, and told with the heartbreaking lyricism of a true Cajun poet, Home of the Happy is a towering achievement of nonfiction storytelling. It’s a mystery full of swampy intrigue, an unflinching meditation on the nature of justice, a labyrinth of small town conspiracies, and a cultural history of remarkable scope and insight. Jordan LaHaye Fontenot is a revelatory new voice for Acadiana, and America." — Joshua Wheeler, author of Acid West
"Home of the Happy is a brilliant debut, gripping and generous in equal measure. Jordan LaHaye Fontenot looks at her family’s tragic history with empathy but also an unrelenting commitment to understand what really happened to her great-grandfather, which leads her and her fortunate readers to examine the machinations of power, privilege, and punishment in her always beloved, sometimes corrupt Cajun hometown." — Emily Nemens, author of The Cactus League
"As a young journalist taking a deep-dive into a 40 year family tragedy, the kidnapping and murder of a great grandfather she never met, Jordan LaHaye Fontenot turned over every rock, stone and pebble to get to the truth. The result is a fascinating, gripping, irresistible gumbo of true crime and family memoir. Her guided tour through a Cajun community few of us are familiar with is a true tour de force." — Charles Salzberg, award-winning author of Second Story Man and Man on the Run
“Home of the Happy is far more than a simple whodunnit: with prose as elegant as it is efficient, Fontenot describes a long-passed form of Cajun culture: a rich tapestry of hospitality, spiced cuisine, fiddle music, and Cajun French that creates a setting that is itself thick as a roux. Her investigative work will leave readers both impressed and inspired, both decided and doubting. Home of the Happy is a feat, a rich weave of the personal and the political.” — Jacinda Townsend, author of Mother Country
"In this absorbing and unsettling book, Jordan LaHaye Fontenont pairs meticulous and conscientious research with vivid scene-setting—peeling back the layers on a crime, and a family tragedy, that for too long languished unconsidered. More than a crime story, though, it is a meditation on storytelling itself, offering important lessons about what families and communities do to preserve their sense of themselves." — Boyce Upholt, author of The Great River
Home of the Happy is a stunning act of personal journalism by a writer with the courage to break long silences. In atmospheric, page-turning style, Jordan LaHaye Fontenot weaves a murder investigation, a legal thriller, and an intergenerational family saga that illuminates more than a century of life on the Acadian prairie. By retracing the lives and deaths that haunt her family, she reveals truths about power and punishment in America that will haunt you long after you close the book.—Chris Feliciano Arnold, author of The Third Bank of the River: Power and Survival in the Twenty-First-Century Amazon
Whispered stories surrounding a family tragedy before she was born inspired Home of the Happy, Jordan LaHaye Fontenot’s fearless and intensely personal tale of her great-grandfather’s murder forty years ago. Opening “a fracture in the cycle of silence” with her reportorial tenacity, Fontenot’s probing and often poetic dive into her family’s Louisiana roots and the place’s landscape and culture deserves a place alongside In Cold Blood and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil as atmospheric crime stories that are also literary page-turners. —Jay Jennings, editor of Charles Portis: Collected Works
Thanks for keeping us up to date. A good life is always full, better when it's not stressed.
Have a good quiet weekend at home. And write to us again! We love your missives.