Jordan Lahaye Fontenot Author Talk

The Garden District Book Shop is thrilled to welcome Louisiana native and author Jordan LaHaye Fontenot on April 2 to celebrate the release of her book Home of the Happy: A Murder on the Cajun Prairie. 

Home of the Happy is a compelling blend of true crime and memoir tracing the author’s investigation into the kidnapping and murder of her great-grandfather in 1980s Louisiana and the reverberations on her family and community throughout the decades

The celebration will begin at 6:00 PM. Fontenot will be joined in conversation by the managing editor of 64 Parishes Alexandra Kennon Shahin. After the two discuss the book they will open the floor for a Q&A. Fontenot will then sign copies of Home of the Happy. Books are available to be reserved in advance on Eventbrite. 

ABOUT THE BOOK

Home of the Happy

On January 16, 1983, Aubrey LaHaye’s body was found floating in the Bayou Nezpique. His kidnapping ten days before sparked “the biggest manhunt in the history of Evangeline Parish.” But his descendants would hear the story as lore, in whispers of the dreadful day the FBI landed a helicopter in the family’s front lawn and set out on horseback to search for the seventy-year-old banker.

Decades later, Aubrey’s great-granddaughter Jordan LaHaye Fontenot asked her father, the parish urologist, to tell the full story. He revealed that to this day, every few months, one of his patients will bring up his grandfather’s murder, and the man accused of killing him, John Brady Balfa, who remains at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola serving a life sentence. They’ll say, in so many words: “Dr. Marcel, I really don’t think that Balfa boy killed your granddaddy.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jordan LaHaye Fontenot’s work has appeared in Oxford American, Atlas Obscura, and others. The managing editor of Country Roads magazine, she lives in Lafayette, Louisiana. Home of the Happy is her first book.