Louisiana Saves the Library

by Emily Beck Cogburn

Genres: Women's Fiction

Synopsis

For Louisiana Richardson, desperate times call for crazy-like-a-fox measures. As the new librarian at Alligator Bayou Parish's struggling library, she's returning to her Southern roots and facing trouble hotter than fresh cornbread out of the oven. Somehow, she's got to draw readers back in and prove the library is still vital - even as domineering parish board head Mrs. Gunderson plans to shut it down for good. If that means Louise has to resort to some unconventional methods - like outrageous inter-library Zumba classes and forming a book club that's anything but Oprah-approved - well, it wouldn't be the first time she went out on a limb...

Soon Louise is doing everything she can to rally the whole community. Before she knows it, she's sparking welcomed changes - and uncovering surprising secrets - throughout her new town. And between glasses of sweet tea, bowls of mouthwatering gumbo, and the warmth of a tantalizing new love, the newly single Southern mom might find a life she never imagined - and a place to finally call home.

Release date: February 1, 2016

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 320

Sample

Louisiana Richardson was tempted to go back to her Cheerio-littered van and find a coffee shop to hide in. Cleaning the house, preparing for the babysitter, and tearing herself from her crying one-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Zoe, had been exhausting. Besides, she was sure that she’d just been invited to the shower so Trish’s baby could be outfitted with the latest in high-tech infant gear. A fellow library science professor at Louisiana A&M, Trish had never graced her with more than a terse hello. The transplanted Texan sometimes gave her pitying glances when Louise opened her purse to find a discarded sippy cup or tried in vain to remove a juice spot that made her shirt look like a map of Europe. Trish’s wrinkle-free clothes were always color coordinated, and she never accidentally wore one blue and one black shoe.

Louise shifted the gift to her other arm and rang the doorbell. One side of the package bulged with an excess of crumpled-up paper, and the box peeked out on the opposite end. With her children constantly interrupting, she’d barely managed to get the thing wrapped, let alone make it look pretty. The sight would have made Martha Stewart choke on her almond tea biscuit.

When a tall blond woman wearing a cream-colored pantsuit and gold high-heeled sandals answered the door, Louise nearly dropped the gift and ran. But it was too late.

“Hi, I’m Louise,” she said, manufacturing an upbeat tone of voice. When she first arrived in Louisiana, she’d considered finally ditching the nickname, but quickly abandoned the idea. “Louisiana” had sounded exotic and interesting to her childhood friends in Minnesota. Here, judging from the incredulous looks she got the first few times she’d introduced herself, it was just too much. There were women in Georgia named Georgia and women in Virginia named Virginia, but apparently no one in the Pelican State shared its name. Except her. So “Louise” it was.

“Alicia. Pleased to meet you.” The woman stepped back to let Louise in. Her toenails were not only painted but also professionally manicured. Alicia’s hair and makeup were so impeccable that she looked like a living doll—the perfect embodiment of a Southern belle, if such an animal still existed. Once Louise was inside the house, the survival of the species was abundantly evident. Southern belles with blond-highlighted hair, wearing ironed, breezy blouses, sipped champagne by the fireplace. Southern belles in creased slacks balanced tiny plates of bite-size morsels as they admired the gifts piled next to Trish. Southern belles with charm-school posture and blemish-free skin trotted to the kitchen in their strappy, high-heeled sandals to refill drinks.

Louise was a mutt in a room full of purebreds. She hadn’t realized that baby showers down South were so formal. In Minnesota, her jeans and plain black T-shirt would have been perfectly acceptable, but they were shabby next to the silk blouses and tailored pantsuits. As usual, her makeup was limited to an indifferent slash of cinnamon lipstick, and her straightish, shoulder-length brown hair wasn’t tinted, fluffed, blow-dried, or permed. Louise couldn’t afford a manicure or a dye job, and all her clothes were relics of the previous decade. When they were married, her ex-husband had enjoyed buying cute dresses and sexy little tops for her. Shopping for clothes with Brendan had made her feel like a princess. On her own Louise had no motivation to update her wardrobe. Her ex was gone, and chasing after children didn’t require cocktail wear.

Louise tried to find a dark corner where she could become invisible, but Alicia’s house was maddeningly bright and open. The combination of the ten-bulb chandelier in the living room/kitchen/dining area and the sunlight coming in through the windows lit up every inch of the space. The beige and white decor seemed unnatural—there wasn’t a stain or smudge anywhere. It reminded Louise of the magazine-worthy perfection of her former in-laws’ mini-mansion with its artfully placed vases of flowers, spotless floors and countertops, and beds piled high with decorative pillows. After the first visit, she’d understood Brendan’s periodic comments about her lack of housekeeping skills. He didn’t nag her; instead, he’d say something like, “Shouldn’t we clean behind the refrigerator once in a while?” “We,” of course, meant her. Just like his father, Brendan never did housework. When they were first married, that detail hadn’t seemed important. Back then, their relationship was about long, passionate discussions over glasses of wine. The misery, betrayal, and pain came later.

Louise’s own modest ranch home looked like a day care gone to seed. The toy-strewn living room was decorated with stickers and marker scribbles. That morning, Zoe had put a blanket on the coffee table and arranged a tea party for her stuffed animals, using every piece of play food she could find. Dinner dishes still in the kitchen sink gave off an odor of curdling milk and stale macaroni and cheese. Paper, crayons, and coloring books covered the kitchen table. Louise had done the dishes and swept the crumbs from under the kitchen table for the babysitter’s sake. As she now endured Alicia’s appraising gaze, she wished she’d skipped the party, left the housecleaning for later, and snuggled on the couch watching morning cartoons with her kids instead. Zoe was obsessed with Elmo, and her delight at seeing him on the screen was so infectious that it made the puppet’s high-decibel voice bearable, even endearing.

Alicia half turned and glanced at the group of elegant women. It was clear that she wanted to join her friends but felt that she had to be polite. “So, do you go to Community?”

“No. What’s that? A church?” Louise didn’t recognize any of the guests. None of the other library science professors had apparently bothered to come, probably because they knew about the Community clique, whatever it was. Louise was out of the loop, as usual. She felt like a kid during her first day in a new school. She had the wrong clothes, the wrong name, even the wrong accent.

Alicia fluffed her blond mane. “Well, we like to say that life is inspiration.” After an awkward pause, she glided back to the living room area, sitting next to another statuesque blonde and laughing about something, most likely Louise’s nondescript jeans.

Louise didn’t need an instruction manual on Southern manners to know that she’d been snubbed. All the assembled belles focused on Trish, who had draped her pregnant body in a pastel flowered dress and roller-curled her honey-blond hair for the occasion. No one looked at Louise.

She inched around behind the women, skirted the last love seat, and slid her present onto the edge of the pile, backing away slowly. From her perch on a straight-backed chair, Alicia glanced at her and then at the badly wrapped present. Her tight smile was the kind usually reserved for an errant child. Chastened, Louise took another step back.

Trish was busy tearing open a large, professionally wrapped gift. The woman sitting next to her—a sister, maybe—recorded the offerings in a notebook shaped like a baby’s bottom. She gave Louise a genuinely friendly smile before her attention was drawn by the exclamations of the observing ladies. “I’ve seen those diaper pails!” someone squealed. “They use grocery bags so you don’t have to buy expensive refills!”

All of the chairs were taken, so Louise stood next to the buffet table and searched for a kindred spirit in the group. But everyone focused on the gift-opening ritual with baffling intensity. The women appeared to be having fun, but maybe it was all pretense. How could anyone get excited about baby clothes, blankets, wipe warmers, pacifier holders, and other assorted infant accessories? When Louise was pregnant for the first time, she’d been new in town—Iowa at the time—and had no friends around to throw her a shower. Even though she could have used the gifts, she didn’t miss the party. Big gatherings caused her inner shy child to reappear, making her awkward, bored, and miserable all at once. Feeling that unpleasant mix of feelings begin to churn around in her gut, she decided to leave while the belles were preoccupied.

She retrieved her worn black purse from behind the designer handbags and walked quickly toward the front door. Thankfully, her tennis shoes made no noise on the wood floors. They would be called “sneakers” in Southern speak. In Louisiana, sub sandwiches were po’boys, counties were parishes, minor wounds were bo-bos, lollipops were suckers, pop was . . . well, she hadn’t yet figured out that one. Sometimes, she felt like she’d stepped through Alice’s looking glass: everything was just a little bit off-kilter.

Opening the front door, she sighed with relief. Free at last. Except that a woman in a peach dress blocked her way. Louise let out a different kind of sigh.

“Lou-Lou! Where do you think you’re going?” Sylvia set down a neatly wrapped present on the stoop, the better to adjust her underwear. Even though her pregnant belly strained the front of her dress, she was stunning with her wavy auburn hair, bright green eyes, and naturally pouty lips enhanced by glossy pink lipstick. Sylvia’s makeup was always flawless, and she had a seemingly endless wardrobe of fashionable clothes. Despite being nearly six feet tall, she usually wore three-inch heels. The current pair were peach platform sandals that matched her dress exactly. She reminded Louise of a red-haired Barbie, but somehow they were friends anyway.

“I’m escaping the Museum of Southern Perfection,” Louise said.

“Shut up! You are not. I just got here.”

“Forget it. We aren’t part of the Community community.”

Sylvia checked her lipstick in a compact mirror. “The coffee shop?”

“No, I think it’s a new-wave church. You know, the kind with electric guitars and preachers in headset microphones.”

“So what? I’m hungry. Carry this present for me. Come on, I’m pregnant.”

“I know, I know.” Louise picked up the box. The pink wrapping paper was covered with winged cherubs. “What’s with the girly stuff? Isn’t she having a boy?”

“I don’t know. Is she?” Sylvia stepped inside and speed-walked to the refreshment table, her heels clicking. All the other guests followed her with their eyes. Sylvia waved, taking the attention for granted. Unlike Louise, Sylvia was never ignored. “Hello, ladies. Trish.”

“Hi, Sylvia. So glad you could make it.” Trish set aside the onesie she’d just unwrapped and beamed, glancing briefly at Louise, almost certainly noticing her for the first time.

“Well, I’m sorry I’m late, but getting the hubs to watch Jimmy is always a challenge. Especially when there’s a game on.” Sylvia took a baby-blue plate and eyed the selection of refreshments.

Louise delivered the present, and Trish immediately tore off the paper. “Oh, Sylvia. This is lovely.”

“Just a little something my friend made,” Sylvia said, filling her plate with tiny shrimp quiches. “It’s nothing.”

Trish held up a baby-size quilt decorated with a boy fishing in a blue denim lake. The assembled ladies made admiring noises.

“Sneak. You knew it was a boy,” Louise said, coming up behind Sylvia and also getting a plate.

Sylvia grinned, her mouth full of quiche. “No, I got lucky. My friend Bonnie from high school has a girlfriend who quilts.”

“Everyone quilts around here, don’t they?”

Sylvia pursed her lips, thinking. “Everyone knows someone who does. I’ll say that, Minnesota girl. Do you have homemade quilts for your kids?”

“You can add that to the list of my parenting failures.”

“Oh my God. I’ll get you some, don’t worry. Poor quilt-less children.”

Louise laughed as she selected some fruit and miniature cheesecakes, feeling at ease for the first time since she’d set foot in Southern-belle land. Even though Sylvia had long legs and a gorgeous smile, something about her was comforting. She could even make Louise stop worrying about the number of calories in each of the deceptively small desserts—at least temporarily.

Trish opened Louise’s present next, a starter kit of baby bottles that she had picked from the registry. The gift seemed to sum up Louise’s entire persona: safe, boring, forgettable. How had she ended up in bayou-and-alligator country with such a flamboyant best friend? It was one of the mysteries of the universe. Trish immediately set the gift aside and picked up a package wrapped in sparkly blue paper.

“Have you checked your e-mail today?” Sylvia asked.

Louise tried a bite of miniature quiche. “Are you off your meds? I just managed to dress myself and make the house minimally presentable before the babysitter came.”

“We got a campus-wide e-mail. There are going to be big cuts at A&M.”

“What do you mean?”

“Budget cuts. You know about that, right? Economic crisis? A&M’s budget reduced by twenty percent?”

“Yes.”

Sales tax revenues were down with the shrinking economy, and the governor had targeted the university for reduction. The previous week, all the faculty and staff had received an e-mail warning them that cuts were coming. No one knew exactly what would happen. There were rumors about killing programs, departments even. German seemed vulnerable, as did Classics and Latin. Everyone agreed that there would be layoffs, at least among the ranks of instructors and adjuncts.

“Well, the library science school is tier three. Which means we might—shoot, probably will—be eliminated,” Sylvia said.

“Eliminated? The library school?” Louise nearly spit out a mouthful of quiche.

Sylvia snorted. “Never mind that our graduates run the public libraries, school libraries, and everything else around here. Yes, we are on the chopping block. And guess who still doesn’t have tenure.”

“Both of us.” Louise’s stomach sank. She’d just moved to this godforsaken place. For an apparently doomed job.

“Exactly. We are royally and completely screwed, sister.”

“But we don’t know for sure yet.”

“No, but they’ve already given pink slips to the German and Classics instructors. At the end of the semester, they’re out of a job.”

Louise set down her plate. She couldn’t eat anymore. This was almost worse than when Brendan told her about Julia. She was going to lose the position she’d worked so hard for, the one thing besides the kids that had kept her going after the divorce.

“Time for games!” Trish said, setting the bottles aside.

“Oh God.” Sylvia rolled her eyes and popped another mini cheesecake into her mouth.

Louise couldn’t concentrate on the article she was trying to rewrite. She kept looking around her A&M office: the dull off-white walls, scratched metal desk cluttered with papers and pictures of her kids, creaky wooden chair circa 1975, ceiling-high green bookcases overflowing with textbooks and research volumes. It might be a crappy office, but it was her crappy office, and she might not have it—or her job—much longer. Now that she was going to lose it, the space seemed especially precious. The professorship was the only real tie she had to the state. Without her job, she’d be lost, not just financially but personally.

Becoming an academic was never her plan, though. Like so many of her life decisions, it had been Brendan’s idea.

He didn’t fit the profile of a deadbeat dad when Louise met him. They sat together in a German language class during their junior year at the University of Minnesota. He wasn’t very good at German, but he had read practically every classic novel and remembered all the characters, plots, and themes. Louise didn’t even have to read the assignments for her English class; she could just talk to him and take notes. Besides literature, they spent hours discussing life in general. He was genuinely interested in what she had to say and made her feel, for the first time in her life, that she might actually have worthwhile ideas. That was what she loved about him: the way he listened.

She followed Brendan to Indiana University, where he’d been accepted into graduate school in English literature. Louise landed a job in the university library. She spent sunny days checking in new issues of periodicals in the basement of the frigid building. The pay for the library tech job was so low that it seemed like a waste of time, so Louise decided to get a master’s degree. Brendan talked her into the PhD program instead. When they completed their degrees, he was offered a position at the University of Iowa. Since she was already pregnant with Max, Louise stayed home to write articles on the history of public libraries. Two were accepted to journals.

Brendan changed after Max was born. He spent longer and longer hours holed up in his office, leaving Louise to take care of the baby by herself. Max never slept through the night, waking up three or four times for feedings. Louise was too tired to clean, cook, write, or even think. She fell asleep holding the baby in the glider chair and woke up terrified that he would roll out of her arms onto the floor. Brendan justified his disappearing act with a flip “How do you think we’re paying for all those diapers?” As Max got older, Brendan showed interest in the toddler for a few days or even weeks, but always fell back into his old ways.

It was obvious that Brendan was having an affair. Louise saw the way he looked at a perky graduate student at one of the few English department parties she managed to attend and she planned to confront him about it. But before she worked up the courage, she realized that her period was late. The pregnancy test showed a plus. Brendan was out that night, supposedly with his English department colleagues. Louise collapsed on the bed and cried herself to sleep alone. She wanted another baby, but not with Brendan. Those days were over.

Three months after Zoe was born, Brendan told her that he wanted a divorce. Louise lacked the energy to throw his books and clothes out the window. She didn’t say anything, just watched him walk out the door, suitcase in hand. At that moment, she vowed not to be dependent on anyone again.

She wrote two more articles, applied for jobs, and received an offer from Louisiana A&M. Even though it was spring and the job didn’t begin until school started, she left Max with Brendan and brought Zoe to Saint Jude to house hunt. A few months later, she and the kids moved into their new home and endured their first stiflingly hot and humid Louisiana summer together.

That was a year ago, but Louise still hadn’t realized her dream of independence. She needed Brendan’s child support check, and to make things worse, he was a slow pay. Living in Louisiana was cheaper than somewhere like Chicago, but library science professor salaries were even cheaper. Add student loans and diapers, and the result was hand-to-mouth living.

Just thinking about it all—the physically and mentally taxing relocation halfway across the country, the late nights working on articles and the book that was supposed to get her tenure, Brendan and his young girlfriend—made Louise’s pulse race with barely contained rage. She fished her cell phone out of her purse and dialed his number. Voice mail, of course.

“Brendan, can you please send the check? I really need it. I know you have my work address. Thanks.” She tossed the phone back in her bag and looked up to see Russ Adwell standing in the doorway. The aging professor wore his usual button-up shirt and slightly crooked bow tie.

“Sorry,” he said. “I was going to knock.”

Louise resisted the urge to put her head down on the desk and maybe even bang it a few times. She didn’t need Adwell to hear her angry voice mails. Still, she was glad to see her eccentric colleague. “That’s okay. I was just verbally abusing my ex-husband’s voice mail.”

Adwell had a tendency to corner unsuspecting students and give long discourses on everything from the history of Masonic persecution in Nazi France to chemical differences between different kinds of fruit. Cataloging was his main area of interest, and he would sometimes launch into a speech about why the Dewey Decimal System was manifestly superior to Library of Congress. Louise had already heard it at least seventeen times. Regardless, he was one of her closest friends. She understood him much better than Trish and her crowd of former debutantes. Adwell said exactly what he was thinking, something Louise found reassuring. With him, what you saw was what you got.

“Two weeks,” he said now, an ironic smile appearing under his pockmarked nose.

“Until what?” Louise was muddle-headed, half inside the article she was reading and half thinking about what to feed the kids for dinner.

“That’s when they’re going to tell us if we’re done.” He made a slashing motion across his throat. “They might not kill the whole program, of course. By which I mean, they might not fire everyone. They could dump some of us into the education school. That is to say, the old farts like me who have tenure.”

Whenever he deviated from one of his canned lectures, Adwell’s speech slowed down like a clock that needed winding. Louise patiently waited until he was finished. He wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t know, but it was worse coming from him. “Or maybe they will find some money somewhere and leave us alone,” she said.

“Don’t count on it, sister. I assume you are on the market.” Adwell sounded less like a clock now and more like a robotic synthesizer.

Louise was surprised to see that he was truly upset. She’d never known him to be bothered by anything. Obnoxious students, pushy administrators, and even the creepy brown American cockroaches that sometimes grew to mouse size in Louisiana had no power to move him. But now his world—and hers—was crumbling. His discomfiture made it all horrifyingly real. “I haven’t looked for jobs yet,” she admitted.

“You haven’t? Goodness’ sakes. I’ll write you a letter of recommendation this afternoon. You’ve already missed the deadline to apply for some of the jobs. The American Library Association conference is on December twenty-seventh.”

“I know. I just can’t stand the thought of moving again.” Dread collected in the pit of Louise’s stomach. Coming to Louisiana with two little kids was one of the hardest things she’d ever done. The thousand-mile drive alone had been torture. Zoe spent half the trip crying because she wanted out of her car seat. When they stopped at a hotel each night, neither child fell asleep until after midnight. Louise had been so worried about passing out on the road that she drank coffee until her hands shook. She’d arrived in Saint Jude feeling strung out and exhausted. The idea of doing it all again terrified her.

“Well, you need to think about it. Unless you want to end up scanning bar codes in some public library.” Adwell spat out the last words as though they were poisonous. Apparently, he didn’t go in for the idea of librarians as fighters for free access and education on behalf of the downtrodden. But his concern for her welfare was touching.

“It might not be that bad,” she said.

“Don’t kid yourself. I’ve been there. You want to stay in academia. Trust me.”

“Well, academia might not want me anymore. I think it’s considering a. . .