Ken Wells: 8 books

Ken Wells’s highly acclaimed picaresque Catahoula Bayou novels introduced “one of the most compelling voices in fiction of the last decade” (Los Angeles Times). Now Wells is back, writing about his favorite subject–the exotic, beleaguered Louisiana wetlands–in a sharp, rollicking tale of...

A sprightly, deeply personal narrative about how gumbo—for 250 years a Cajun and Creole secret—has become one of the world’s most beloved dishes. Ask any self-respecting Louisianan who makes the best gumbo and the answer is universal: “Momma.” The product of a melting pot of culinary...

Do beer yeast rustlers really exist? Who patented the Beer Goddess? How can you tell a Beer Geek from a Beer Nazi? Where exactly is Beervana? Does Big Beer hate Little Beer? Ken Wells, a novelist, Pulitzer Prize finalist, and longtime Wall Street Journal writer, answers these questions and more by...

The capstone of Ken Wells’s acclaimed Catahoula Bayou trilogy, Logan’s Storm tracks the epic journey of Logan LaBauve as he flees corrupt cops while trying to lead Chilly Cox—the teenager whose “crime” was rescuing Logan’s son, Meely, from a racist bully—to safety. But dodging two-footed...

Fifteen-year-old Meely LaBauve is growing up on Catahoula Bayou and living by his wits. His father is an alligator hunter, still unable to cope with the death of his wife eight years earlier. He finds comfort in bottles of hooch and with companionable women and disappears for days at a time. School,...

On any given day, millions of Wall Street Journal readers put aside the serious business and economic news of the day to focus first on the paper's middle column (a.k.a. the A-hed), a virtual sound-bubble for light literary fare -- a short story, a tall tale, an old yarn, a series of vignettes, and...

Rascal may be the happiest beagle ever to live. He used to live on Voclain’s Farm, with its whole jambalaya of dogs, but now he lives with his very own boy, Meely. Together they explore the Louisiana bayou, bunny chasin’, coon and squirrel huntin’, and crawfishin’. But when Meely gets stuck...

Fifteen years after he tormented fellow students at Catahoula Bayou School, Junior Guidry is broke, drunk, one-legged, and living in a wreck of a trailer on the edge of a snake-infested swamp. He's survived an oil-rig accident that would've killed most men but, with the help of a good lawyer, made...