Characters spice up Cajun soap opera

Anyone who knows a Louisianian knows that the state exerts incredible pull on her natives. That sense of home and family, along with those old staples love and death, lies at the core of John Dufresne's new novel, Deep in the Shade of Paradise, the followup to Louisiana Power & Light, published in 1994. (A separate novel, Love Warps the Mind a Little, was released in 1997.)

The action revolves around the Loudermilk family and their coming together at the ancestral home called "Paradise" in the soggy backwater of Shiver-de-Freeze, La., for the wedding of Grisham Loudermilk and Ariane Thevenot. The wedding serves as reunion as the colorful characters revel in memories, and each other, and their stories are as interesting as the gumbo-

and-alphabet soup of their names.

Dufresne weaves plot, subplot and subsubplot in a swamp-drenched tapestry that includes Grisham's cousin Adlai falling in love with Grisham's bride-to-be; Adlai's father, Royce Birdsong, in the throes of Alzheimer, befriending his grand-nephew, Bergeron Boudeleaux deBastrop Fontana (or Boudou, ". . . rhymes with Who Do?"), an 11-year-old with a photographic memory; Alvin Lee (cousin to Adlai, Grisham and Boudou's mother, Earlene deBastrop) the current caretaker of Paradise and former pastor of The Fire Baptized Evangelical Temple of the King, and his two wives, Lorraine - who is nine months pregnant - and Ouida, who falls in love with Boudou's cousin Duane. Other eyes are also trained on Boudou, the collective gaze of Tous-les-

Deux, the conjoined twins.

Pick any of these story lines and enjoy. They are all intertwined and, like the characters, interrelated. The abundance of story lines is, frankly, both refreshing and burdensome. While there is a wealth of eccentric characters for readers to sink their teeth into, they may begin to wonder why Deep in the Shade of Paradise isn't a collection of short stories rather than a novel.

Dufresne has a rich and fertile imagination that is not limited to characters or story but also focuses on how a book is put together and how it flows. At the outset, there is a genealogy chart. Do not shrug this off. Study it. Learn it. You will need it, for this Cajun soap opera is populated by a large cast. But in an abundance of narrative devices, Dufresne includes a prolog, an epilog and an appendix, most of which material may as well have been included in the body of the story. Dufresne also stops the action to speak directly to the reader about what is going on.

In Chapter 9, Dufresne takes time out - digresses - to write, in Laurence Sterne manner, about digression, explaining that story is the antithesis of logic, that "Digression is the choice of journey over destination." He even invites the reader to digress, to write of love, and he offers a few words of instruction. At the bottom of the blank page provided is encouragement to send Dufresne what you've written, either by E-mail (address included) or in care of the publisher. "Who knows, maybe he'll collect them in an anthology," he writes.

Despite a few flaws in construction - these digressions and devices tend to slow things down - the story and stories-within-stories stand up well on their own, strongly supported by the characters and their relationships with each other. Deep in the Shade of Paradise is as much fun as a family picnic under a Spanish moss-draped water oak could be, if only the odd uncle can be ignored.

Richard J. Alley is a local freelance writer.