Nancy Rawles

Good to the bone recipes, family ties, Louisiana folklore and the quest for elusive dreams are stirred up in this gumbo pot of a story in Nancy Rawles's spirited sequel to Love Like Gumbo, Crawfish Dreams. In Love we saw Grace, the youngest daughter of Camille Broussard, go through her identity crises, sometimes racially and certainly gender wise. Now we have the matriarch Camille's story, who at age sixty-seven feels her life slipping away from her. All she wants to do is to be able to get ahead just a little before she dies. Cleaning and cooking for the church was not the way she wanted to go out. Her specialty staples of meat pies and seafood gumbo are renowned and it is her desire to open a business and share with the world.

The Broussards are just one of many families that migrated from Louisiana to Los Angeles pre and post WWII and brought their strait-laced Creole culture, mores, history and superstitions. Camille's seven children are her heart and the bane of her existence. Marc, a card carrying member of the black bourgeoisie; Yvette, the sexually frustrated oldest daughter who is married to Juge, an older man in ill health; Grace, the lesbian in therapy, who has been in community college for seven years; Raymond, whose loss of his longshoreman's job causes him to wallow in self-pity; Joseph, the Vietnam vet who is an alcoholic living on the streets and Anthony, who has inherited the cabinet making business from T-Papa Broussard, are just some of the colorful personalities. And then there is Nicolas, her nineteen-year old grandson who has just been released from prison and has brought shame to the family. But they all have the same idea, get Mama out of Watts. It is 1984 going into 1985, twenty years after the L.A. Riots. There are those who stayed and those who fled for greener pastures, including many of the Creole families that have lived there since the 30s. But Camille, a widow for nine years, hangs on to the good old days, before the Riots, when families where intact, everyone worked hard, went to Mass together and had big parties with lots of Creole food.

Camille tries a number of enterprises, sells her famous meat pies to church events and festivals, bottles her famous Creole hot sauce, packages pralines, and even concocts a apricot brandy sauce with her neighbor Pep. Then she hits on an idea to open a restaurant, Camille's Creole Kitchen, but she is not one to bother with details like licenses and zoning issues; she just knows her stuff is good. Her kids think she is taking on too much at her age and who would come to the middle of Watts to dine anyway? Meanwhile the Broussards are struggling to understand the past while painting pretty pictures of family harmony to the public but not knowing how to reach out to poor, mentally disturbed Joseph and newly-released Nicolas. Camille feels it is her place to teach her family to love unconditionally and not give up on their dreams.

There are recipes sprinkled through the books such as Miss Camille's Meat Pies and her grandmother's dark pralines. Camille is happy when cooking and the food is a metaphor for the themes of her life. Ms. Rawles beautifully weaves symbolic language corresponding with the seasons of nature as well as the seasons of Camille's life. She also details how the issue of class and color are played out in Creole families struggling to either assimilate or not assimilate into mainstream African American life. This book, the second in the trilogy about the Broussard family, is a delectable treat and I look forward to the third installment.