Crossing Lake Pontchartrain

A careless moment, a snarky comment, then like a river bursting through a dam, forty-year-old Larry Winstead launches onto a journey of self-discovery both revealing and painfully satisfying.

Years of faltered communications and a little too much beer have left his marriage crumbling. His writing dream withers untouched in a drawer. And the mysterious disappearance of his father years ago carves a gouge through every relationship he touches. But a chance meeting of an beautiful Argentine artist and a new job inspire Larry's courage to confront his life that has somehow slipped out of control.

When work pulls Larry from the doldrums of hometown South Mississippi into the throb of renewal in post-Katrina New Orleans, Larry steps into a city refusing to stay broken. Artists and worldly new friends, a Cajun café, an iron sculptor’s studio, and a hobbyist clairvoyant now become creative influences inspiring belief in the power of human affection. Award-winning literary fiction, Larry’s story of an everyman artist finding new love and genuine purpose reminds us how shaking off a life that no longer fits makes possible the opportunity of finding true purpose.

But Larry does not journey alone. A single mother yoga instructor named Emma revitalizes his inspiration with her collaboration around the novel he’s writing while he helps her cope with her own broken past and embrace her love of painting. Grounded, spiritually alive, and fiercely clear-headed, her strength bolsters his own and his creativity inspires the part of her she had yielded to failure; together they learn how to construct a new vision of giving and receiving.

Sharp, funny, and achingly human, Crossing Lake Pontchartrain balances midlife transformation with the acceptance of hard truths. Here, the healing powers of friendship and art catalyze the verve of a shared future from the damage of midlife disappointments.

Southern fiction suited to thoughtful discussion and book club sharing, Larry’s world reveals how sometimes when things fall apart, they fall together again, only better.