By Heidi Simmons
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“The Marauders”
by Tom Cooper
Fiction
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How much does our community impact our character and shape our dreams? In Tom Cooper’s The Marauders (Crown, 320 pages) a nightmare of environmental disasters reconfigure the lives of a Louisiana bayou town.
The Marauders takes place five years after Katrina in a community called Janette, Louisiana. Life hasn’t come back to normal since the hurricane, not even close. And now, a manmade disaster threatens all that they have left.
In the swamps of Louisiana’s Barataria Bay, oil from the British Petroleum leak is pouring into the gulf and seeping into the everyday lives of the locals. The oil is destroying the wildlife, making people sick and choking off the source of the community’s livelihood.
As the oil spreads into the bayou, so does dysfunction. The community is coming apart. Generational shrimpers must find new ways to survive, and a handful of men will do whatever it takes to make ends meet.
The Toup twins are growing premium marijuana on an island way out in the bayou. They are mean and make a formidable identical duo. Everyone knows and everyone does their best to just stay clear –- if indeed they can.
As the shrimp diminish and sales drop, Wes Trench and his dad are not making enough money to stay afloat. Since Wes’ mother died in the hurricane, their relationship has suffered and working together on a shrimp boat becomes impossible.
So Wes teams up with a one-armed, pill-popping, oddball named Lindquist. But it’s not shrimp they’re after. It’s the treasure of pirate Jean Lafitte.
Meanwhile, Cosgrove and Hanson, two ne’er-do-wells meet while they work off community service hours painting a house for a corrupt city official. The two then get a job cleaning oil off birds for $15 an hour, but decide stealing an island’s worth of pot would be more lucrative.
Locally raised, Brady Grimes finds himself back in his hometown working for BP trying to force low-payment settlements on the fiercely independent working people. No one likes him. Since he’s been back, he hasn’t even taken the time to visit his mother. When he does, he discovers she is ill from oil-spill toxins.
The story takes place in a small town, so all these characters cross paths one way or another. They’ve all had dreams of a better life, but those dreams have drifted away with the oil-slick tide.
I like to think young Wes is the protagonist. He is a smart kid who did well in school until he dropped out to help his dad. He loves his community and wants to be part of the next generation of shrimpers. Maybe his simple dream can still come true.
Wes has been building his own boat just like his father and grandfather did before him. But with the way things currently are, he’s not sure there’s a future as a shrimper or if any life is possible in his hometown.
Doped up and crazed on Oxycontin, Lindquist can’t – won’t — stop looking for treasure. Exhausted and water-logged, Wes leaves Lindquist in hopes he can patch things up with his dad. Cosgrove and Hanson are caught red-handed on the “pot” island and Lindquist finds gold doubloons, but has no boat. Chaos and violence ensue in the wilds of the bayou.
The Marauders is a fun, well-written read. With great observations and wit, author Cooper paints a vivid picture of Cajun life and Louisiana culture. The characters are colorful and the setting is so rich you feel the sticky moisture of the bayou and the stench of the raw crude.
However for me, there is not enough plot in this story. I kept waiting for all the characters to come together in a climatic or explosive experience. Each character is a ticking time bomb, but nothing goes off. There was so much potential to connect the dots and create a page turning novel, but it doesn’t turn out that way.
Yet, I still enjoyed being caught up in the world. The reader is given a first-hand look at how devastating the hurricane and oil spill were to the people who lived and made their living in the affected areas.
As bad as some of the characters were, I still liked most of them. I found myself even rooting for the horrible Toup twins. I liked the resiliency of the people and their survival instincts. Each character faces his personal demons, but only Wes appears to learn something from the experience.
The Marauders works best as a picaresque-like novel. The story is more episodic than plot driven. The roguish, underclass characters must live by their wits to survive in a corrupt society. Using their limited abilities, they set out on an adventure that basically leads nowhere. I say picaresque-like because traditionally picaresque is told from a first person view. Cooper tells the story with an omniscient voice.
This is Cooper’s debut novel and I can hardly wait to read what comes next.
