Pearce Oysters

April 8, 2024
A family of Louisiana oyster farmers deals with the aftermath of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill in Takacs’s intense debut. Jordan Pearce, 34, works the oyster leases he inherited from his late father five years earlier. He sends paychecks to his younger brother, Benny, who co-owns the business but refuses to work on the boats and rarely visits, preferring to pose as a starving anarchist in New Orleans. When the offshore drilling rig Deepwater Horizon explodes and oil pours into the Gulf of Mexico, the company that contracted the rig hatches a plan to use toxic dispersants for the cleanup. Jordan pleads for Benny to return and help harvest the oysters while they still can. Benny, freshly dumped by his girlfriend after cheating on her, slinks home. As uncertainty about the future and threats to their health mount, Jordan starts dating a Native American bartender, his mother develops a worsening addiction to Xanax, and Benny, who is bisexual, begins sleeping with a Salvadoran day laborer. Though the supporting characters feel underdeveloped, Takacs captures the emotional toll of the disaster on the Pearces. It’s a devastating portait of the human cost of ecological destruction. Agent: Maria Whelan, InkWell Management.

April 1, 2024
In 2010, third-generation Louisiana oysterman Jordan Pearce takes over the family business after his father's death. Jordan loves the hardscrabble life, but he must support his distraught mother and musician brother Benny, who lives in New Orleans and is involved with Kiki, a radical ecology protester, whom he brings to the family home the week the BP oil rig explodes. When the spill is not contained, Jordan is forced to ask his brother to help with harvesting. As the brothers struggle to understand each other, they must also deal with their mother's depression and the collapse of their business, and they put up a huge sign on their roof to protest the destruction. This draws an NPR reporter to their home to interview them about the spill, but the publicity cannot save their livelihood. This debut novel vividly explores oystermen and their culture in the face of a terrible environmental disaster. The complex characters and the lovingly described Louisiana setting bring this eco-tragedy sympathetically to life. Recommended to readers of issue-oriented fiction such as Charlotte McConaghy's Migrations (2020) and Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead (2022).

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June 15, 2024
A family's livelihood is on the line in the wake of the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Jordan Pearce is a Louisiana oysterman. His father was an oysterman, and his father's father was an oysterman. It's in his blood. So when the oil from the BP spill starts threatening his oyster allotments, Jordan feels his entire world begin to crumble. First his friend and longtime deckhand Doug "Babies" Davies quits suddenly for a higher-paying job working to clean up the spill. After trying all his leads to find a replacement for Babies and quickly discovering that his friend is not the only one jumping ship to work for the oilmen, Jordan almost loses hope. Finally, at his widowed mother May's urging, Jordan reluctantly convinces his semi-estranged bohemian brother, Benny, to come in from New Orleans to work with him on the boat. Jordan and Benny begin to build back their relationship while everything else around them falls apart. News starts spreading that the dispersant used to clean up the spill is harmful to their health; the oil continues to encroach on the oysters; and the personal lives of Jordan, Benny, and May all hang in the balance. Takacs packs a lot in, taking on politics, environmentalism, addiction, family dysfunction, and love. At times the pacing is awkward, and some parts feel too rushed and overabundant, particularly toward the end. That said, Takacs tells a story that feels fresh in its point of view, all the while lending her characters a humanity that paints them neither as heroes nor as villains, but as messy, complex, and wholly worthy of the reader's time: "People could disbelieve anything, Benny thought, if it's too painful. There are no limits. He swiveled to see who was clapping for his brother--people who seemed to think Jordan was being brave. This was fear masquerading as heroism, but it was the only form of heroism available at the moment." A unique story with a wealth of compelling characters.

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September 13, 2024

After his father's death, 35-year-old Jordan Pearce finds himself unexpectedly in charge of his family's 80-year-old oyster business. Takacs sets her complex debut in a coastal Louisiana town just as the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explodes. Local commercial fishing is a balancing act in the best of times, but the disaster tips the balance, and bitter struggles break out between the oil company and the small independent oyster farmers and fisherfolk. Takacs melds descriptions of the oil rig explosion and the oil's slow ingress into the story, showing the effects of the disaster as they unfurl. Narrator Xavier Casals adopts a comfortable, unaffected demeanor, dropping into a Cajun dialect to flesh out the pertinent characters. His smooth style reflects the laid-back rural Gulf Coast vibe, imbuing the Pearce family with an outward calm that belies their inner turmoil: Jordan's mother has been struggling since the death of the boys' father; Jordan has been working to keep his business going and to find love, while younger brother Benny is trying to break into the music business in New Orleans. VERDICT This tale of heartache and destruction is both moving and compelling. Share with listeners seeking layered, issue-oriented fiction.--Laura Trombley

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