With Reservations: Musings From the Other Side

by Roger Emile Stouff

For more than three decades Roger Emile Stouff has written his newspaper column “From the Other Side” on topics ranging from his life as a Chitimacha tribal member to his infatuation with fly fishing and mourning the loss of ancestral lands and waters. Those columns garnered him multiple awards and were the roots of his three memoirs as well as three nationally-broadcast television programs. Then there were the other The victories and pitfalls of remodeling a 170-year-old house; the misery of mowing the lawn with a beat-up old riding mower he nick-named after General George Armstrong Custer; living with a schizophrenic cat. Over more than thirty years and some 3,000 columns he fussed over cellphones, praised the virtues of good dogs and sweet tea, battled killer bees, debated the fine art of cussin’ and getting older in a South that had drastically changed just over the course of his life. With irreverent humor and a keen eye for the absurd, "With Reservations" presents the best of those essays, along with a few heart-tugs along the way. So sit back, grab a glass of honey-sweetened tea as this Native American and Cajun son of the South grapples with surviving in a world turned on its ear from a unique perspective born of two of the most unique cultures to be found in the great state of Louisiana.

309 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 6, 2014

About the author

Roger Emile Stouff is the son of Nicholas Leonard Stouff Jr., last chief of the Chitimacha Tribe of Louisiana, and Lydia Marie Gaudet Stouff, daughter of a Cajun farmer. He has been a journalist for more than thirty years and writer of the award-winning column "From the Other Side" in the St. Mary and Franklin Banner-Tribune. He was featured on the television show "Fly Fishing America" in 2006, and was writer and narrator of the documentary "Native Waters: A Chitimacha Recollection" on Louisiana Public Broadcasting in 2010. Based on his two memoirs, "Native Waters" and "The Great Sadness," the show is now showing on public broadcasting stations nationwide, was nominated for an Emmy and was recipient of a Bronze Telly Award.

He writes extensively about his Native American ancestry in autobiography, fiction and short stories, including the connection the Chitimacha, "people of the many waters" hold to the ancestral waters of the Atchafalaya Basin.

With co-author Kenneth Brown he has also authored science-fiction and epic fantasy novels, including the first two books of the series "The Allidian Saga."