Last One Out Shut Off the Lights

A debut story collection from a rising star, revealing Louisiana and its characters with stark honesty and empathy as they grapple with homesickness, desperation, and desire. Last One Out Shut Off the Lights is a vivid and evocative portrait of the last-chance towns of southern Louisiana, where oil development, industrial pollution, dying wetlands, and the ever-present threat of devastating hurricanes have eroded their inhabitants' sense of home. These stories feature characters struggling to find a foothold in a world that is forever washing out from under them, and who must reckon with their ambivalence about belonging to a place so continually in flux. An overwhelmed mother leaves her infant son in a closet to buy herself a night out; a teacher with a terminally ill husband fantasizes about another man; an old man surveys the devastation left by Hurricane Katrina and decides the fate of a lost cat; and a young woman out of options tries to drag her obese brother to Mexico for surgery, desperate to save his life and her own. Stephanie Soileau's writing is a powerful reminder of the rich variety of American southern culture, and brings back into focus the language and customs that still make Louisiana so unique.