You'd think that by the summer before senior year of high school, Lucy Beauregard would have a pretty good idea of what love looks like. After all, she spends half her time secretly reading trashy romance novels, right? So why is Lucy more confused than ever? Her one attempt at love went sour, and now she has strange feelings about the handsome new drama teacher who can't keep his hands to himself. Lucy's mother, who usually has plenty of advice, might be carrying on an affair with the lonely artist who has just moved to town. Lucy's best friends Evie and Mary Jordan certainly don't have any answers --- they're just as confused as Lucy is.

The more Lucy spends time with the other inhabitants of her small Louisiana town, though, the more she realizes that love --- even passion --- can happen in the most unexpected places. A couple of senior citizens find true love at the nursing home. Lucy's own Tante Pearl, who usually trudges around in army fatigues, is suddenly investing in perfumes and potions. And then there's the quiet, unassuming new boy in town, Dewey, who shyly slips into Lucy's life and may teach her more about love than she ever could have imagined.

LOVE, CAJUN STYLE is infused with the down-home folksiness of the bayou region. Characters constantly pepper their food with Tabasco and pepper their speech with homegrown aphorisms about the nature of love. The characters' Catholic religion is at the center of their lives, and talk of faith mixes naturally into everyday conversation, as does pretty earthy talk about sex. The author's affection for her Southern roots shines through every page. Its big weakness is that in trying to create a portrait of an entire small town, it has a lot of subplots, some of which seem too hurriedly resolved at the end of the book.

In many ways, LOVE, CAJUN STYLE is about a loss of innocence --- Lucy's summer of love is an awakening not only to the possibilities of love's joys but also to the potential of love and sex to hurt people and wound relationships. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the novel also seems in hindsight to be a love letter to a more simple, small-town, Louisiana way of life and love that will --- like Lucy herself --- no longer ever be the same.