Elizabeth Nell Dubus

Foreward to the trade edition, Levee Press

During the years since Cajun was first published, readers have asked many questions about the writing of it, questions which sort themselves into categories and which reflect personal responses to the book.

Some questions concern the history presented in Cajun: how accurate is it, and how did I do all that research? Still other questions concern the folklore, the manners and mores, depicted in Cajun. How do I know people did these things? Are they doing them still?

I shall answer some of the questions I am asked most often–and will continue to be asked, I hope, as new readers enter into the French heritage of my native state through the pages of Cajun. First of all, in terms of research, I began with two noted narrative histories of Louisiana, one by Edwin Davis and the other by Charles Gayarre. I used these as controls: any event described in both of them needed to be included in the novel. And then I turned to hundreds of specialized histories–books, journals, diaries, letters, and newspapers in order to learn the details I needed to create this world. I tried to do all the research for each section of the novel before I sat down to write it, knowing that if I snagged on a technical detail, I would not be able to progress until I had resolved it. One morning; however, I realized I had forgotten to determine an extremely important detail concerning the battle of Baton Rouge between the Spanish and English during the Revolutionary War. I did not know the quarter of the moon the night before the battle–and without that, I could not write my planned scene. As you will discover, I placed my Arcadian scouts in the woods in front of the fort, where they saw British soldiers slip over the sides, preparing to do a little scouting of their own. BUT–if there was no moon–my Cajuns could not see the British leave their fort. If there was too much moon–a full moon, for example–would the British take such a risk? Not wanting to lose an entire morning's work by leaving my typewriter to go to the library, I called the Astronomy Department at Louisiana State University and asked to speak to a professor. Once he understood my problem, he solved it immediately. "Call the reference desk at the library," he said. "There is a book with a list of all recorded lunar eclipses. Give the library the date you need, and ask them to find the lunar eclipse closest to that date. Then count the days forward–or backward, as the case may be–to find the quarter of the moon." I did as he suggested and learned, to my relief, that the moon was three quarters full on the night in question–light enough for my Cajuns to see the British, with shadows enough for the soldiers to risk leaving their fort. So, yes, the historical facts in Cajun are as accurate as hours and hours of research could make them.

As for the people–although they are not based on anyone I know, or any members of my own family–they are certainly born out of my experience growing up in Arcadiana as a descendant of two families who have both been in Louisiana for more than 150 years. My father's ancestors were French Royalists, like the deClouets. And I do use his family's names–his first ancestor to reach Louisiana was Noel Andre Dubus, married to Helene DeLaune. Characteristics of both my parents appear in the book: Marthe deClouet is very much like my mother, Katherine Burke Dubus Watkins, and the honor so important to my men is what I think of most when I think of my father, Andre Jules Dubus. So steeped in the French tradition was he that it surprised none of us when he died on Bastille Day! In French Louisiana, ancestors are not distant people–they live and breathe in stories told on front porches and around dinner tables. So, yes, family lore certainly found its way into my characters, giving me a wonderful way of getting even closer to the beliefs and customs I had grown up with and perhaps had begun to take for granted. As for the folklore, the manners and mores, depicted in Cajun–I grew up surrounded with an amalgamation of Cajun ways and the more formal manners of descendants of the French Royalists. Lafayette, where I spent my formative years, is a sophisticated, cultured little city, whose people are anything but provincial. Yet only ten miles out of Lafayette, you are in true Cajun country–people still drove their horse-drawn buggies into Mass on Sundays when I was growing up. The fais-do-dos, the fetes, the customs such as boucheries in the fall–all of these were part of daily life. And, of course, the almost universal Catholicism–Lafayette was ninety-five percent Catholic when I lived there–contributed a richness of religious ritual and solemnity that French of all derivations shared. More than anything else, I think, kindness is what characterized the Cajuns I knew.

I never knew a bigoted person until I left that happy part of Louisiana–when integration came to Lafayette in 1955, it occurred with not one incident–and that pattern of acceptance and tolerance maintains still. A wonderful place to live–and one that is very hard to leave, for nowhere else have I found such joy, such content. But in the pages of Cajun, and of its two sequels, Where Love Rules and To Love and To Dream, I can go back to a time and place that formed my character, educated me, opened my eyes and ears to the beauty of music and art and literature, taught me that I must be a committed and productive citizen–and gave me a heart full of memories that still light up my life.