The Marauders

Seventeen-year-old Wes Trench is working on a shrimp boat with his father, but as the shrimp get skinnier and grayer, his father gets angrier and meaner. Life was already grueling enough in the marshy expanse of land and bay known as the Barataria, just south of New Orleans. But the one-two punch of Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill has desperate residents settling their losses for a check of $1,500 from BP, a sum that will barely last three months. When Wes quits working with his father, he discovers that shrimping is all he knows and that anyone still trying to eke out a living that way is clearly insane. Wes is but one of the narrators in Cooper's evocative novel, which features an extravagant range of viewpoints, such as the nefarious, marijuana-growing Toup twins; Lindquist, a one-armed, pill-popping raconteur with an endless supply of crude knock-knock jokes; ne'er-do-well Cosgrove with his bandy partner in crime, Hanson; and Grimes, a Baratarian native pushing settlements for BP. All are marauders, plundering the land and sea for gold, illegal crops, or dying sea life. Just as there is beauty in the harsh surroundings, there is goodness, even in this ragtag cast of characters. Cooper's exposition is lush with description without swerving from his narrators' points of view.