Home of the Happy
A Murder on the Cajun Prairie
by Jordan LaHaye Fontenot
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Pub Date Apr 01 2025 | Archive Date May 27 2025
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Description
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
"Riveting and atmospheric, Home of the Happy is also a heartfelt grappling with a trauma in the author’s family and her attempts to unravel its secrets once and for all. LaHaye Fontenot’s writing is urgent, fueled not just by a desire for justice but by love for her ancestors and the Cajun community of south Louisiana. A must-read for true crime and mystery fans."— Ana Reyes, New York Times bestselling author of The House in the Pines
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.”
For readers of Maggie Nelson’s The Red Parts and Emma Copley Eisenberg's The Third Rainbow Girl, Home of the Happy unravels the layers of suffering borne of this brutal crime—and investigates the mysteries that linger beneath generations of silence. Is it possible that an innocent man languishes in prison, still, wrongly convicted of murdering the author’s great-grandfather?
Available Editions
EDITION | Other Format |
ISBN | 9780063257962 |
PRICE | $32.50 (USD) |
PAGES | 336 |
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
This true crime / memoir blend story was pretty good! It was a quick paced story, kept me entertained. I liked the dual timeline and how the storytelling went back and forth in the different timelines. I liked the writing style and the pacing of it too.
Thank you to NetGalley, the publishers, and especially the author for this ARC in exchange for my honest review of the book!!
Part memoir, part true crime, but written as a story that you will never forget. Jordan LaHaye Fontenot digs deep into family history to uncover secrets of the community, secrets of the LaHaye family, and ultimately searches for answers to ensure that the truth is heard.
I enjoyed this book and I think others will too.
WOW! I have not heard of this case before this book and now I fully vested! The details of this crime and the events that have come to play.....I am shocked! I will never forget this case and I hope this family gets the justice they deserve. Today, tomorrow and forever.
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James Patterson; Brian Sitts
General Fiction (Adult), Mystery & Thrillers, Women's Fiction