EBRPL’s One Book, One Community selection explores a swamp life and more

Living off the grid. Eating by the seasons. Getting back to nature.

Few of us will ever experience what it’s like to fling aside modern conveniences and live, for real, by those ideals. But you can read about two people who did in this year’s East Baton Rouge Parish Library’s One Book, One Community selection, Atchafalaya Houseboat, My Years in the Louisiana Swamp.

Gwen Roland and Calvin Voisin were young idealists in the 1970s who built a houseboat by hand and moved it to Bloody Bayou, deep in the Atchafalaya Swamp. Each of them were descendants of basin dwellers, and they shared a mutual desire to live simply within the vast swamp’s wild and rugged beauty.

Their years on Bloody Bayou might have stayed a private pursuit known only by their family and friends, if not for Roland’s writing. She published a column about their daily existence in the now defunct Gris Gris, an alternative newspaper that covered politics and entertainment in Baton Rouge. Roland and Voisin were also featured in National Geographic with pictures documenting their lives shot by famed Louisiana photographer and naturalist C.C. Lockwood, who shared their love for the basin.

Years later, long after Roland and Voisin parted ways, she turned her recollections into the book, Atchafalaya Houseboat, published by the LSU Press in 2006. Later, Louisiana Public Broadcasting made a documentary by the same name recounting Roland and Voisin’s adventures, with Roland narrating. Fans of the book and documentary, and those who recall the dramatic photographs Lockwood shot, remember the mythical, endearing, quality the story took on. There was something compelling about two young people living by their wits, creativity and respect for the land around them.

It’s the kind of story that was perfect for this year’s community read, says EBRP Assistant Library Director Mary Stein.

“We wanted to focusing on and kinder, gentler book and something that would give us a chance to talk about Louisiana’s natural landscape,” Stein says. “Gwen’s book allows us to see Louisiana through fresh eyes and celebrate our natural resources.”

The One Book, One Community program kicked off on March 5, and its programs continue through April.

Roland, now 73 and a resident of rural Georgia, says she was surprised when she was informed her book was this year’s selection.

“I said, ‘this has to be a mistake,’” Roland says.

But the more she learned about the intention behind the One Book, One Community program, the more it excited her. The book would be a launching off point to not only talk about how she and Voisin lived, but also to discuss matters that are still important to her, including sustainable living and the importance of preserving family traditions. Those topics and others will be explored further throughout a series of programs tied to One Book, One Community, including author’s talks by Roland, screenings of the documentary and presentations on other books and topics that explore Louisiana’s natural beauty and current ecological challenges.

The library system has hosted One Book, One Community since 2003, modeling the program after one started in Seattle, Stein says. In the inaugural year, Baton Rouge’s chosen title was Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, a classic and beloved book that gave readers a chance to talk about race relations, disparities in the legal system and other related topics, Stein says.

For several years, titles were selected from the literary canon, and included books like Farenheit 451, Oliver Twist and The Great Gatsby. More recently, selections include a Louisiana hook. Last year’s book was Sarah M. Broome’s New Orleans memoir, The Yellow House. Other titles have included Kingfish by Richard D. White, Jr., and Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi.

Roland, familiar to many readers in Baton Rouge, will speak at the library on Saturday, April 23, and Sunday, April 24. One talk will focus on how family traditions that bring meaning to our existence are preserved and passed on. The other talk will focus on the book itself, during which Roland will share how she and Voisin decided to move deep into the swamp and embrace its solitude and simplicity. She’ll also share how they lived and survived, and how, when their finances were depleted after caring for their injured dog, Roland took a job as a cook on a tugboat, where she unexpectedly fell in love with Preston Roland, to whom she is still married.

While her new relationship brought an end to Roland’s swamp life, it was by no means the end of her spontaneity. Preston quit his riverboat life, and for the next decade, the two traveled and worked together in a variety of disparate professions, including welding, working as writer and photographer for a society magazine in Naples, Florida, and living in the Everglades while working for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission.

For many years, the couple has lived in Meansville, Georgia, at the southern tip of the Appalachian Mountains, where they raise chickens, grow vegetables and have fostered 60 dogs.

Roland explains her lifelong free-spiritedness matter-of-factly.

“If I can see the end of the road and I know where it leads,” she says, “why go there?”

For more information about One Book, One Community, visit readonebook.org.