{"product_id":"understanding-tim-gautreaux","title":"Understanding Tim Gautreaux","description":"This book offers an introduction to the works of a Cajun writer who finds optimism in his blue-collar tales. Margaret Donovan Bauer presents the first book-length study of the Louisiana storyteller, who injects a seldom heard Cajun voice into Southern literature and offers a rare optimistic vision among other contemporary writers of the hardscrabble American South. Bauer surveys Tim Gautreaux's three novels - \"\"The Next Step in the Dance\"\", \"\"The Clearing, and \"\"The Missing\"\" - and two collections of short fiction - \"\"Same Place, Same Things\"\" and \"\"Welding with Children\"\" - to identify his major themes, character types, and structures. She views his chief contribution to Southern letters to be an authentic insider's view of Cajun culture, one resulting in a skillful, realistic, and sympathetic vision of historical and contemporary Acadiana in flux. Bauer addresses how Gautreaux's hopeful vision distinguishes him from other contemporary writers of the blue-collar South. She views Gautreaux's poor white protagonists as action-oriented characters who, while trapped by circumstances, still strive to affect positive change in their lives.","brand":"University of South Carolina Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Product","offer_id":57533191455064,"sku":"9781570038594","price":44.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0278\/1295\/4195\/files\/9781570038594.jpg?v=1781783194","url":"https:\/\/agendabookshop.com\/products\/understanding-tim-gautreaux","provider":"Agenda Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}