Should the Waters Take Us

An epic literary debut that follows one family across four centuries from France, to Acadia, to the bayous of Southern Louisiana--a poignant examination of belonging, place, and how individual, self-interested acts of moral compromise contribute to cycles of injustice and destruction.

In the shifting bayous of coastal Louisiana, on a rapidly disappearing spit of land, generations of Acadians have kept their heads above water. When an offshore rig explodes and unleashes a catastrophic spill, the people of Pelerin Parish face a reckoning that tests the bonds of family and the survival of their way of life.

As the toxic plume of oil advances across the Gulf, Boy Broussard, already living hand-to-mouth off land that isn't his, finds himself raising a daughter he barely knows. His dying aunt, Rosa Terrebonne, tries to right the misdeeds of the past, yet finds herself thwarted by her husband Jacot, a retired landman for big oil, who refuses to give up his claim to the land where Boy makes his living. Meanwhile the parish priest Father Fabian, far from his home in the Niger Delta, lends his assistance to Boy's all-but-motherless daughter, only to be met with suspicion and hostility from the insular community. When a powerful hurricane threatens to turn an already dire situation into a total cataclysm, this sharp-edged cast of characters collides in a thunderclap of resentment and violence. Throughout all of this, Soileau unfolds a sweeping tapestry of loss, resilience, and the fragile miracle of hope.

Should the Waters Take Us reaches across four hundred years of history to illuminate the many epochs and peoples of this storied place. Soileau has crafted an emotionally explosive family saga, as well as a masterful literary crie de coeur about the ways in which moral compromise can eat away at the very fabric of the places we call home.

Author: Stephanie Soileau
Publisher: Random House Large Print Publishing
Published: 07/14/2026
Pages: 432
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.95lbs
Size: 9.20h x 6.10w x 1.10d
ISBN: 9798217347025

About the Author
STEPHANIE SOILEAU is the author of the critically acclaimed story collection Last One Out Shut Off the Lights. Her work has been supported by fellowships from the Wallace Stegner Fellowship Program at Stanford University and the National Endowment for the Arts. Originally from Lake Charles, Louisiana, Soileau now lives in Chicago with her family and teaches in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Chicago.