Bodacious Blues

“Bodacious Blues” is the final installment of the trilogy of a Creole family from Estilette, Louisiana. The reader is taken on an adventure that takes up where the author’s second book (“Shadows of the Blues”) leaves off. The story begins in 1965 and tells of the descendents, Lester and Ann Martel of the Martel Creole family. Ann goes on to become a physician, which their grandfather had hoped for Lester. But such was not the case and the roles reversed. Instead, Ann became the doctor and Lester struggles on to fulfill his dreams. He gets wrapped up with protest groups fighting against racial intimidation in Estilette and then travels to Chicago and gets romantically involved. Then Les tries his hand at being an actor and moves to Hollywood for a while. Living life on his own terms, he soon discovers that Hollywood is not the place he thought it would be. There was the deception, lack of values and the lies. All of it made Les realizes that becoming a man is not an easy task.

The author sets a good mood for “Bodacious Blues” by relating the problems that three generations of this family have struggled through. They survived the perils of religious conflicts, murder, voodoo, and racism among all the other trials they are given. “Bodacious Blues” earned my high grade of a B, I think it would be a good adult read and has as much diversity as Harold Robbins’ “Carpetbaggers.” With its 350 pages, it’s not a one-day read, but it is a fairly fast moving book. As with any two or three volume series, it would have helped had I read the first and second LeBlanc books, then I would have had a better background and lead in to this third and final book of the trilogy - “Bodacious Blues.”


Bodacious Blues
Whitney J. LeBlanc
Outskirts Press (2011)
ISBN 9781432773793
Reviewed by William Phenn for Reader Views (12/11)