If you love all things Cajun or most things Louisiana, you will enjoy “Poor Man’s Provence,” the new book by Rheta Grimsley Johnson.

First, a little about Rheta.

We met nearly 30 years ago when I was visiting with her (then) husband, Jimmy Johnson, the editorial cartoonist at the Jackson (MS) Daily News. Jimmy was in the process of leaving the paper to begin his own comic strip, a fantasy of everyone who ever picked up a pen and doodled. At his home, he showed me the new strip, “Arlo and Janis.” (Some of our readers see this strip in your local paper; alas, it does not run in the Times-Picayune.) That’s when I met Rheta.

Rheta Grimsley Johnson was a features writer for the Memphis Commercial Appeal. She traveled over the South interviewing characters. Really. Sounds like a dream job for a writer. And that’s how she came to interview me in Tupelo in the Spring of ’82 when I was preaching a revival at Calvary Baptist Church there. (Not that I’m a character, you understand.) Somewhere around here, I have a clipping of that article. Being written about by Rheta Grimsley Johnson is akin to being mentioned in a sermon by Billy Graham.

In the late 1980s Rheta wrote the authorized biography of Charles Schulz, the cartoonist, called “Good Grief.” I own a copy and have it dog-eared from all the great stories it contains. (www.alibris.com can find you a copy cheap.)

And now, Rheta has written “Poor Man’s Provence,” the subtitle for which is: “Finding Myself in Cajun Louisiana.”

What Rheta–and husband Don Grierson–did was to visit tiny Henderson, Louisiana, some 12 miles out from Lafayette slap-dab in the heart of Cajunland, to do a story for her newspaper syndicate. They ended up moving there.

Rheta says books have been written on the other communities around there–Beaux Bridge, New Iberia, Lafayette, Avery Island–but nothing about Henderson.

“It may be the homeliest town in all America, if you don’t count Peoria or Detroit, which I don’t because they are cities. But then,you don’t always fall in love because of good looks. Sometimes personality trumps beauty.”

“Henderson is junky, unplanned, littered, but interesting. It may be the spiritual home of the wrecked automobile….Neighboring towns have their giant live oaks strung with Spanish moss–which, by the way, isn’t Spanish and isn’t moss–but Henderson has its abandoned cars.”

“The town wasn’t founded until after the Great Flood of 1927, when the soaked Cajun swamp-dwellers sought higher ground.”

“And on the eighth day, in a frivolous mood, God created manufactured housing.”

I love her writing.

At first, Rheta and Don bought a houseboat there–the Green Queen–and later a real house. These days, they divide their year between Henderson and their place in Iuka, Mississippi.

The book is about the characters of Henderson, the culture of Acadiana (a term she despises; it’s Cajunland!), the food, the music, and the swamps.

Over the years, Rheta has won the American Society of Newspaper Editors’ Distinguished Writing Award, the Ernie Pyle Journalism Award, the Scripps Howard Writer of the Year Award, and the National Headliner Award. Convinced?

She writes about Helene Boudreaux, a mother of eight who has the purest singing voice ever and taught herself to play the guitar. Helene bills herself as the “Catahoula Cajun Truck-Driving Mama.” Rheta writes about the “doughnut bomber” who takes people fishing, leaves them, goes off to buy a bag full of doughnuts, then flies his small plane over the fishers and drops the bag on top of them–without their having a clue who is up there and what is falling on top of them!

We learn that every little store in that part of the world serves plate lunches with food to die for. Which is what Rheta wants for her last meal, if she’s ever executed, she says. Either a fried oyster poboy or a fried shrimp poboy.

As my buddy Jerry Clower used to say, “This has thrown a craving on me!” I know what I’m having for lunch today.

I’ve reread the above and realize none of this begins to capture the essence of who this lady is or what the book does. Suffice it to say if you love things Cajun or any part of Southern Louisiana or if you just enjoy good writing, you need to get Rheta Grimsley Johnson’s “Poor Man’s Provence.”

The title is a play on the book “Year in Provence,” in which Peter somebody chronicles his time living in an old French farmhouse. Rheta admits to being a francophile (note to Mom: that means “a lover of all things French”), so the title is a natural.

After recommending several old books recently, we thought you would appreciate learning of a new one worth reading.

When you read it, you will encounter Rheta’s religious views, which, let’s be honest here, hardly exist. She peppers her writing with sidenotes such as this when talking about Helene Boudreaux’ praying for people to be healed.

“Being a skeptic and heathen, I walked around outside to keep from jinxing the sure cure…. I wished for a moment that I could believe in such magic, could believe that prayers from a certain someone had weight with the Powers that Be, if indeed, there be any. It would be downright convenient to have in your stable of friends a generous woman who could, through divine contacts, banish a wart, or cure a cancer.”

Two things we don’t claim, however, as believers: that we can effect such cures and that it’s convenient. We ask, and God does what He pleases (Psalm 115:3).

As untold numbers of believers who live in great difficulty and oppression could testify, the Christian faith is a lot of things. Convenient, it ain’t.

Rheta hasn’t asked, but if she did, I’d probably say the only way she’s going to find out the facts on God and the Christian faith is to do what she did with Henderson, Louisiana: move there for a while. Don’t rush in and speed away. Make an investment of yourself to learning.

Give it time, Boudreaux. It’s worth the effort.

You would enjoy knowing Rheta and you will love her book.