Katherine "Katie-Lee" Fontenot is a fifty-year-old Louisiana-to-New-York transplant who moved away from home to escape her family and memories. When her younger sister is killed in a freak accident at the zoo where she works, Katie-Lee heads home for the funeral. And runs straight into all the things she has been trying to escape since leaving. Family tension. Skeletons in most everyone's closet. A long-ago tragedy that has never been dealt with. Anger. Forgiveness. Love. It's all there in Opelousas, and Katie-Lee is going to have to face all of it.

This is the third book of Wheaton's I have read, and, like the others, I did enjoy it. Wheaton is originally from Louisiana, and it shows in the details. I don't know anything about Cajun country, but the setting, tone, and characterizations feel real in a way I am not sure can be fully captured if you don't know those pieces personally. The family dynamic will probably resonate with anyone who has a family. Katie-Lee buried a lot when she left home for New York, and coming back for the funeral brings it all bubbling up again, for her and the rest of her family and hometown friends. A lot of what surfaces is difficult and emotionally charged, but she also finds there were good moments. Times of joy, and fun, and laughter. It's all woven together in a story that is very internal, but not preachy or dull. It's set in the '70s, and the cultural references (Facebook and Katie-Lee's cell phone are almost characters), are very evident. There's angst, anger, frustration, tears, laughter, and all the other human emotions brought on by a shared tragedy. In other words, it's a story about people and all the baggage that goes along with being a person.

If you enjoy stories about family, facing loss, and discovering if you really can go home again, you will probably enjoy this one. I did.

I went to grad school with Ken and we were friends, so, you know....

I liked the small details of this story-- both the bitterness of the observations of Katherine the NY cynic and a lot of the detail stuff about Cajun country also rang true. There's a lot of funny, genuine stuff here. I like the theme of survivor's guilt, if it's right to call it that, the need to escape to save your life: I can totally identify.

But I found the broader arc of the story predictable to a degree that took me out of the book at times. Also, I don't know about this protagonist-- it feels about as thick as a mask. But that might be me, reading Kenny where I should be reading Katherine.

Facebook plays a large role here, bigger than in any other book I can think of. I don't know what to think of that-- I sometimes felt like it was a narrative contrivance, to explain some coincidences and to allow for others-- but then, Katherine's facebook addition is part of the storyline, so I don't know what I think.

Despite my concerns expressed here, I really thought this was a real fulfilling story, very accomplished and hitting almost all its marks. I just wish those marks were more surprising.

I really liked this story about Katie Lee who fled Louisiana at the age of 20 after an unspeakable tragedy, only to find herself home after another tragedy 30 years later. Her reflection on her life at 50...her relationship (or lack of) with her family...her friends...I liked it all. This book paints an accurate portrait of a people and place, but the story could have taken place in any small town anywhere in America.

At fifty-years-old, Katherine is doing pretty well for herself in New York. She has a successful job working for an advertising magazine, she has a sizable nest egg in the bank, and she spends her vacation time in far flung parts of the world seeing more than she ever imagined she could. While not perfect, this is the life she has lived for the last thirty years since she sought refuge on a Greyhound bus headed as far from her country Cajun childhood as she could get. When a family tragedy calls her back home, she has to face her past in a way she has studiously and pharmaceutically avoided for decades.

I had a good feeling about Sweet As Cane, Salty As Tears by Ken Wheaton when I read the Author's Note at the beginning of the book:

A note about the word "yall." While most consider y'all a contraction of you all, I consider it one word and treat it thusly. Please indulge one person's crazy mission to change the language.

Having been born and raised in Texas, it mystifies me that the rest of the country doesn't take advantage of this wonderful word. It is so concise. It makes so much more sense that attempting to make the word "you" stand in for both the singular and the plural. "You" is the singular, "Y'all" is the plural, and, if you really want to push it, "All y'all" is the multiple plural. I have never, however, used "y'all" in the singular. Some people do, but not me. But back to Ken Wheaton and his use of this and other words and phrases that might need a little explanation. On his blog, he provides a list that he refers to as "Talkin' Funny: Louisiana Style. You can read those here and here.

As Katherine is pulled back into seeing her family- pulled because she dreads going- she must face her past mistakes and the tragedy that propelled her from home. Raised with three sisters and two brothers, it is a large family to whom she is returning. There are her siblings, their spouses and ex-spouses, as well as their children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren. In a time and place where teen pregnancy was common, there are fewer years between the generations. One complaint I had about the first half of this book was the difficulty I had keeping the sisters straight. They are named Karla- Jean, Kendra-Sue, Katie-Lee (Katherine), and Karen-Anne. This added to the overall feeling of the book, but it did take me a little while to remember who each one was. Part of this confusion, especially when it comes to meeting all of the extended family, may have been intentional as Katherine herself has trouble remembering to whom each niece and nephew belong.

I enjoyed reading this book and it kept me turning the pages, but it was not a happy book to read. There is a lot of sadness and dissatisfaction with life, but there is also the bond of family and it ends with hope. And reading it left me with a craving for Popeye's chicken.

Check out more of my reviews at SmartGirlsRead!

www.smartgirlsread.blogspot.com

Real Rating: 3.5* of five

8 APRIL 2020 UPDATE This very good read is on Kindle sale for $1.99 until midnight!

The Publisher Says: A freak accident forces a New Yorker to return to Louisiana and confront her Cajun past

There is nothing more dangerous than a spooked rhinoceros. It is just before lunchtime when Huey, the prized black rhino of Broussard, Louisiana, erupts from his enclosure, trampling a zoo employee on his way to a rampage in the Cajun countryside. The incident makes the rounds online as News of the Weird, and Katherine Fontenot is laughing along with the rest of her New York office when she notices the name of the hurt zookeeper: Karen-Anne Castille—her sister.

Fifty years old, lonely, and in danger of being laid off, Katherine has spent decades trying to ignore her Louisiana roots. Forced home by Karen-Anne’s accident, she remembers everything about the bayou that she wanted to escape: the heat, the mosquitoes, and the constant, crushing embrace of family. But when forced to confront the ghosts of her past, she discovers that escape might never have been necessary.

I RECEIVED THIS BOOK FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS-PLUS. THANK YOU.

My Review: It's funny how The Book for a particular mood will lurk until that moment hits. I needed an undemanding read, one that had nothing to do with the present-day mishegas I find both distasteful and unseemly; I found this book set in Obama-era New York City and central Louisiana. About a funeral, and coming to terms with what family means, what being in a family requires, how it is that Facebook has metastasized across nations and cultures.

Published in 2015, the book follows Katie-Lee, fiftyish and full of the fear that gives single people, as she returns to bury her little sister in the wake of a Facebook-meme-able death. In fact, she finds out about the life-ending from her colleagues at (unnamed but obvious) Advertising Age, their titters and chuckles about a humorous tale of a zookeeper trampled by a rhino morphing into a dreadful reality: That's her baby sister. The shamefaced colleagues try to make it right, but she's already launched the boat onto the Styx.

She has to Go Home. Not a flying visit. The Native has to Return. O frabjous day.

Must be done. She does it. Hijinks ensue; her Louisiana family, of her generation that is, are all au courant with the world as they see it on Facebook, which is a large player in the novel. No political crap yet, as this book was written and published before the 2016 debacle revealed how much influence the platform has over far more than one's personal life. No Instagram, glancing mentions of Twitter, and Katie-Lee's a screen addict whose phone running out of bars is a Biblical-level disaster. She has more in common with the grandkids of her sisters and brother than with them.

She honestly has no idea what to do with her sadness. Facing mortality for the first time is a life-changing experience. I did it in my 20s when the AIDS epidemic decimated the gay guys I knew and loved. I remember the emotions, the detachment from reality that realizing your own death is, inevitably and inexorably, coming closer and closer. Youth is gone in that moment, calendar be hanged. And Katie-Lee's life in Brooklyn isn't such that she's cushioned from the yawning emptiness of survivorhood.

Dig we must, chere.

The healing in this tale is family-wide, and inclusive. The tragedies of the past are present again as they always are at funerals; so are the fun memories that inject themselves into the geology of one's life. People whose acts are literally unforgivable are not forgiven, though that day will clearly come. But the truly unforgivable ones are the least likely to see themselves as needing forgiveness. THAT resonated. Author Wheaton nailed that. But he did so in a format, following a structure, and thus made sure the Lesson isn't A Sermon (and he includes one of those, a real dilly of a tone-deaf nightmare-from-Hell one at that) and moves on to the next laugh.

There's the rub. This is a nightclub act written as a book. These moments are Wheaton's Brooklyn party pieces connected into a gender-swapped story to make them cohesive. (In fact, Katie-Lee's ex Howie sounds to me like Wheaton's ex only maybe not gender-swapped, if you take my meaning.) They're not less real or funny for that, but the structure of the book does nothing to hide this fact from knowing eyes. I'm from South Central Texas, I had a mamaw and she was transplanted Cajun stock, and in the days when I had party pieces, they fit together much the same way as Wheaton's do. So my eyes weren't fogged up but rather cleared by reading the present action-memory-lesson structure.

I hurry to remind y'all that 3-1/2 stars is a positive rating. I'm not trying to blast the author; in fact I liked the rhythm, was comfortably on board with the predictability of it, and felt completely relaxed and happy and at home. Nothing much happens. No excitement apart from a funeral games scene that about popped my eyeballs out from trying not to wake my roomie up from the laughing.

So do I recommend this read? Sure, so long as you're a storytelling-voice addict. It's $8 on your ereader and that's not a lot to spend on four or five hours' vacation without moving. But if you're not in the mood to listen to stories, this will not be a successful trip to Opelousas. (Where Mamaw's family came from! Now, I don't *know* that any Tullises married any Wheatons, but I bet if we....)

This book - it had me smiling at the Prologue. I went into it not knowing what to expect. Katie-Lee (or Katherine to her New York office colleagues) has left Louisiana behind after a family tragedy to work for a magazine in NYC. Addicted to facebook, she uses it as her only real means of keeping tabs on her family, mainly her sisters. When someone posts a link about an accident involving a Rhino and a Louisiana vet, Katie-Lee is stunned to find that the vet is her younger sister, Karen-Anne. Forcing her to face her past, Katie-Lee has to conquer her demons and head back home.

I can't believe this was written by a man. Can NOT believe it. Katie-Lee is so real, so warm, so fragile (yet so strong), so loveable - this book is a gorgeous read. The author makes both Louisiana and New York City jump off the page. I've never been to either place, but by the end, I felt like I had. The way Katie-Lee and her sister Kendra-Sue interact is so familiar to anyone who's ever had a bit of family drama - some of their spats had me in tears laughing.

Loved, loved this book. Sincere thanks to the publishers & author for granting my Netgalley request to read it.