Waiting
for the White Pelicans
And Other Tales of the Gulf Coast
by Paul Estronza La Violette
Illustrated by Patricia Rigney
175 pp
$19.95 Hardback with Dust Jacket
© 2000 by Paul Estronza La Violette
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La
Violette captures everyday life on Coast Writer wants to make
imprint for future.
| The Sun
Herald |
Reviewed Sunday, September 10, 2000 |
Like any other author, Paul La Violette wants to sell his books. But there's another reason he's writing and publishing vignettes of life, mostly from his viewpoint and mostly about life on the Coast.
La Violette wants to capture day-to-day events and the culture of our time for future generations.
"In a hundred years from now, it will be hard for our people to know what we have," he said. "When our lights go out, they'll be gone lights. There will be other lights to come on."
La Violette and his wife, Stella, have lived on the beachfront
near Nicholson Avenue for 25 years. He published "Views
from a Front Porch" last year and continues his
stories in the just-released "Waiting for the White
Pelicans."
He describes the joy of beachfront life in the "One Penny Chip": "Sometimes you become entranced by an egret dancing in the tidal shallows. Sometimes it's a flight of pelicans fishing a color line in the water just a few hundred yards from the beach. Sometimes it's the silhouette of barges and shrimpers or low storm clouds on the horizon. Sometimes all these can be found collectively in a single scene, sometimes in parts of many scenes spread over days."
La Violette is a regular columnist for The Sea Coast Echo.
"Some of the stories in the new book are columns revisited," he said. "Many are new. They have the reflection of the local scene, but they're more universal. You can read them in Pensacola, Gulf Shores or Sheridan, Wyoming, for that matter."
The stories in "Waiting for the White Pelicans"
are shorter than the ones in La Violette's first book, making
them ideal for whiling away brief periods of time by browsing.
"Some of them are funny," he said. "Some of them, they're just that I wanted to say a few things. You try to grasp things you see and hold them in your mind, but you can't. So I wrote them down."
Anyone whose ever had problems programing a device that's supposed to make life easier will chuckle over "But It's Not Thursday in Korea." La Violette's conversation with a woman in "The Wedding Guest" will remind you of intimate conversations you've had with strangers that left a lasting impression.
"It’s a strange feeling to walk on a surface that is ordinarily covered by the Sound’s tea-dark waters. It’s as if a plug had been pulled and the floor of the Sound has suddenly been laid bare," La Violette writes in "Tidal Flats on a Winter’s Day."
In all the book contains 34 vignettes.
The author is an oceanographer with 40 years of experience working for the government, Mississippi State University and as a consultant. He has worked aboard research aircraft and ships in almost all of the world’s oceans, spending most of his time in the Arctic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea and, most recently, the Gulf of Mexico.
The illustrations sprinkled throughout the book are by Bay St. Louis artist Patricia Rigney.
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