Belle of the Bayou

Ellen Pilon is a library assistant in the Patrick Power Library at Saint
Mary’s University in Halifax.

As this first novel by short-story writer Joanna Goodman opens, Arabella
(Ara) Slominski Boot is “celebrating” her 40th birthday. Following a
session at Le Spa in Montreal (courtesy of her second husband), she
arrives home early and discovers said husband indulging in kinky sex
with her best friend. Ara packs up her son and takes off to Louisiana,
where her self-centred mother lives. In the course of the novel, she
becomes entangled with a thieving hitchhiker, a palm-reading neighbor, a
karate instructor, the amorous editor of a small-town newspaper, a
masseuse/psychotherapist, and a voodoo doll. Ara’s mother, at 70, is
still serving beer in topless bars. Rescuing Ara from all the chaos is
her love affair with a 69-year-old jazz musician named Joe “Hooty”
Birmingham.

At one point, the palm reader tells Ara that she shouldn’t “expect
a man to salvage you ... He should complement you, not resuscitate
you.” This well-crafted and often hilarious romantic comedy takes its
heroine on a wild journey of self-discovery, a journey in which she is
transformed from doormat wife into independent belle of the bayou.