“Swamped” co-authored by Houma natives ranks number one on Amazon!

Bayou Black native and author Ken Wells recently released his sixth novel “Swamped” co-authored by his niece, and Houma native Hillary Wells. The book has quickly risen to the top of the Amazon chart, and is ranked as number one on Amazon’s New Releases in Teen & Young Adult Country Life eBooks!

In their book, Jack Landry, a Cajun teenager, and weekend swamp-tour guide is one of two survivors in a plane crash in the Atchafalaya. He finds himself in the swamp with Olivia Fitzgerald, a wealthy New York teenager. After saving them from the sinking plane, the real adventure begins, as Jack must use his swamp-savvy skills to keep them alive, and navigate their unlikely love story.

While classified as a Young Adult adventure story, the co-authors think the story has enormous crossover appeal. “Think of the movie “Romancing the Stone,” but the heroes are teenagers,” said Ken. Hillary explains that the characters and emotional feel of the book are very nuanced. “It’s a survival story that will show you anguish but also make you laugh. That’s how life is. People and particularly young adults are always figuring out how to navigate life, new experiences, new emotions,” she said. “The book really reflects that journey. You get to experience all of those things through these two powerful characters. The other side of the appeal is the swamp imagery. We all have survival fantasies. We all think about what we would do if it happened to us. This book transports you vividly into the Atchafalaya, a place my Uncle Ken and I both deeply love. It’s a crazy, terrifying, intense and beautiful ride. Who wouldn’t want to go on it?”

“I wrote the original draft of the book several years ago and it had gone through several iterations but I felt that it still wasn’t quite right. I thought the young female co-protagonist needed to be more fully formed and a more-equal partner in the adventure and the dialogue between the teens needed to be more contemporary,” Ken explained. “We swapped the manuscript back and forth several times and at the end of the process I felt we’d finally gotten the novel where it needed to be. Olivia is a more fully fledged character, the dialogue is snappier and whittier and we realized the virtue of adding some comedic moments to a plot with a fair number of dark turns.” The end result earned the book the number one spot on Amazon’s New Releases in Teen & Young Adult Country Life eBooks.

Ken grew up on Bayou Black and got his start in journalism on the then weekly Houma Courier. He went on to a career that included stops at the Miami Herald, where he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist; the Wall Street Journal; and Bloomberg Businessweek magazine. He’s the author of five previous well-received novels of the Cajun bayous, including the coming of age classic, “Meely LaBauve,” published by Random House and still in print after 23 years. His post-Katrina work of narrative non-fiction, “The Good Pirates of the Forgotten Bayous,” published by Yale University Press, won the Harry Chapin Book Award after its debut in 2008.

Both Ken and Hillary are graduates of Terrebonne High School and Nicholls State University. Hillary lives in New Orleans and works in Louisiana’s burgeoning film industry. Ken works on creative projects and splits his time between Chicago, frequent visits to the bayouland, and a little summer log cabin in the wilds of Maine.