READERS GUIDE

Questions and Topics for Discussion

1. The Denver Post called Junior’s Leg "a fine comic gumbo." Yet in the reader’s first encounter, Junior Guidry, the odious bully from Wells’s debut novel, Meely LaBauve, is not exactly an easy guy to warm up to. The author himself has said that Junior’s sole saving grace at the start of the book is his ability to laugh, if darkly, at himself. Discuss the author’s use of humor in this novel and how it illuminates serious issues — race, class, fealty, vengeance, love and redemption — that Junior is forced to deal with.

2) Wells tries to take you inside the head of his characters by having them relate their stories in their own voices — a device he employs, stream-of-consciousness-like, without the use of quotation marks. Discuss how this lack of grammatical convention in Junior’s Leg affects the storytelling. Do you think it makes the book easier to read? Or more difficult?

3) Richard Bernstein of the New York Times said of Junior’s Leg that Wells "writes with an amused tenderness toward his characters." Discuss the author’s uses of empathy, irony and satire-even self satirization in Junior’s transformation from a crude lout to a character determined to finally make principled decisions.

4) Southern writers often face a difficult choice in deciding how much to flavor their prose with dialect or vernacular and still keep their readers. In Junior’s Leg, this decision is further complicated because the book is set in a part of the French-flavored South that is off the beaten path to even many Southerners. Discuss Wells’ use of Cajun and southern phrasing and idioms. Do you think they enrich the reader’s understanding of the region?

5) Complex interracial themes weave themselves throughout Meely LaBauve and
again in Junior’s Leg. The book’s heroine, Iris Mary Parfait, is a woman of mixed-race heritage (black, white, Indian) who, beyond her kindness, smarts and good sense, further confuses Junior’s bigoted notions by being an albino who is more white than he is. Discuss the author’s handling of racial themes and how they illuminate the characters and the book’s setting. By the novel’s end, would you still consider Junior a bigot and/or a racist?

6) Wells often mixes South Louisiana folkloric elements (gris-gris, the Evil Eye, the loup garou) with religious themes and subtexts (Virgin Mary shrines, for example) to bring color and context to his writing. Do you think the use of these devices adds to the reader’s understanding of Cajun culture?

2. Wells tries to take you inside the head of his characters by having them relate their stories in their own voices — a device he employs, stream-of-consciousness-like, without the use of quotation marks. Discuss how this lack of grammatical convention in Junior’s Leg affects the storytelling. Do you think it makes the book easier to read? Or more difficult?

3. Richard Bernstein of the New York Times said of Junior’s Leg that Wells "writes with an amused tenderness toward his characters." Discuss the author’s uses of empathy, irony and satire-even self satirization in Junior’s transformation from a crude lout to a character determined to finally make principled decisions.

4. Southern writers often face a difficult choice in deciding how much to flavor their prose with dialect or vernacular and still keep their readers. In Junior’s Leg, this decision is further complicated because the book is set in a part of the French-flavored South that is off the beaten path to even many Southerners. Discuss Wells’ use of Cajun and southern phrasing and idioms. Do you think they enrich the reader’s understanding of the region?

5. Complex interracial themes weave themselves throughout Meely LaBauve and again in Junior’s Leg. The book’s heroine, Iris Mary Parfait, is a woman of mixed-race heritage (black, white, Indian) who, beyond her kindness, smarts and good sense, further confuses Junior’s bigoted notions by being an albino who is more white than he is. Discuss the author’s handling of racial themes and how they illuminate the characters and the book’s setting. By the novel’s end, would you still consider Junior a bigot and/or a racist?

6. Wells often mixes South Louisiana folkloric elements (gris-gris, the Evil Eye, the loup garou) with religious themes and subtexts (Virgin Mary shrines, for example) to bring color and context to his writing. Do you think the use of these devices adds to the reader’s understanding of Cajun culture?