Father Mississippi: Good Read in General; Must Read for Louisiana

I don't consider Lyle Saxon so much a historian as a raconteur. I've read three of his books, one on Louisiana, another on New Orleans and a biography on Jean Lafitte and I don't think I would cite any of those as a source in a book I was writing.

Saxon, to his credit, admits at the start that "Mississippi" is as much a scrapbok as a history of the river. The book is a combination of personal experiences growing up by the river, experiencing a crevasse as a child, background on steamboat commerce and exploration; however, a large chunk of the book is related to the subtitle, which relates to the Great Flood of 1927.

In a lot of ways, Saxon's book is the forerunner of John Barry's masterpiece Rising Tide. What's impressive is that Saxon wrote his 400+ page book in the same year as the flood.

If you enjoyed Rising Tide and have an interest in the river and the South, then this is a good book to read, though just a warning/disclaimer: this book was written in the south in the late twenties, so some of the language is coarse by our standards. Also, Saxon literally transcribes the patois spoken by blacks that he interviewed, which comes off a bit Amos and Andy-esque. However, Saxon is balanced as he does the same thing for Cajuns he interviewed.

Perhaps the biggest factual error (at least for me) is his reference that Saint Bernard's residents were Cajun when in fact they were mostly Islenos (Spanish speaking). Once again, this is a local matter of greater importance to me than the overall story of their plight.