Permeatingthe shadows and the darkness of the bayoua world all its own that stretches from Houston, Texas, to Mobile, Alabamathis study of marsh music leaves New Orleans to discover secret legends and vivid mythology in the surrounding wilderness. The people and the cultures that have called the bayou homesuch as Bob Dylan, Jerry Reed, Nick Cave, Bo Didley, and a one-armed Cajun backwoodsman and gator hunter named Amos Mosesare unearthed not only through their own words and lives but also through a study of their music and interviews with visitors toand residents from the region. The interviews with Jerry Reed and Bo Didley, who both died in 2008, are among the last, emphasizing the book’s importance as a piece of cultural preservation. Part social history, part epic travelogue, and partly a lament for a way of life that has now all but disappeared, this is the gripping story of American music’s forgotten childhoodand the parentage it barely even knows.