This month, we\u2019re reading novels about two communities\u2014Cajuns in Louisiana and a Tamil immigrant family in Toronto\u2014coping with the hardships of North American life.<\/p>\n
Stephanie Soileau (Doubleday, 336 pp., $30, July 2026)<\/em><\/p>\n This month, we\u2019re reading novels about two communities\u2014Cajuns in Louisiana and a Tamil immigrant family in Toronto\u2014coping with the hardships of North American life.<\/p>\n Stephanie Soileau (Doubleday, 336 pp., $30, July 2026)<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Stephanie Soileau\u2019s debut novel, Should the Waters Take Us<\/a><\/em>, begins and ends in the same place: a house in the bayous of southern Louisiana, on the eve of a devastating storm. At the start of the book, it is 1893, and what seems to be the Cheni\u00e8re Caminada hurricane<\/a> is about to hit, taking with it entire communities. In 2010, the relatives of the family whose home miraculously survived that onslaught prepare to face another one.<\/p>\n Should the Waters Take Us <\/em>is an epic about environmental exploitation and the calamities it wreaks. Most of the story takes place in 2010 in the fictional Louisiana community of Pelerin Parish. Many residents are proudly Cajun, \u201cthe French-speaking descendants of the rollicking, complacent Acadians expelled from New France [in what is now Nova Scotia] more than a century before.\u201d<\/p>\n Soileau\u2019s cast of protagonists wrestles with the fallout of an oil rig explosion that is almost certainly a reference to the Deepwater Horizon spill<\/a>, the worst such disaster in U.S. history. \u201cGod sent up a cloud of ash and a deluge of oil from the belly of the earth,\u201d she writes. Soileau, who is herself Cajun, also includes historical vignettes that add an ancestral perspective to the main plot, such as the opening chapter about the 1893 storm.<\/p>\n The 2010 blast doesn\u2019t only harm the natural environment\u2014it also endangers people\u2019s livelihoods. In many ways, southern Louisiana is trapped by its plentiful natural resources: \u201cThe blessing of oil, the curse of oil. Wealth that saves and wealth that destroys,\u201d Soileau writes. The residents of Pelerin Parish are both economically dependent on the oil industry and resentful of it, powerless in the face of unabashed corporate greed. Soileau mentions ExxonMobil by name several times throughout the book.<\/p>\n After the explosion, a single mother who worked on the rig to support her daughter is suddenly traumatized and out of work, coaxed into signing a waiver that prevents her from suing her employer for damages. (\u201c[J]ust the kind of shenanigans the oil industry would pull,\u201d Soileau writes.) An oyster farmer can no longer farm or sell his contaminated wares. And some residents in the community\u2014a place of \u201coverwhelming whiteness\u201d\u2014respond to an influx of Black and Latino cleanup workers from elsewhere in the state with racism.<\/p>\n Just as Pelerin Parish begins to find its footing again, a dangerous hurricane barrels toward the Louisiana coastline. The trauma of Hurricane Katrina is still fresh as Soileau\u2019s characters jockey with nature\u2019s furor once more.<\/p>\n Should the Waters Take Us <\/em>alternately reads as both provincial and global. For most characters, even a trip to New Orleans is a cosmopolitan undertaking. But Soileau takes care to emphasize that locals\u2019 travails do not occur in a vacuum, especially when an economy runs on oil.<\/p>\n In addition to scenes in Canada and France\u2014the text is peppered with French phrases\u2014Soileau briefly takes characters to Nigeria. The Catholic priest in Pelerin Parish is Nigerian and grew up near an oil rig, yet disasters in the country rarely made headlines. The priest reflects on the differences between his two homes: \u201cEvery year in the Niger Delta, an Exxon Valdez<\/em><\/a>. Every year for forty years. The Niger Delta? No one is watching. The United States isn\u2019t Nigeria. Everyone is watching.\u201d<\/p>\n Oil spills are\u2014bluntly\u2014gross, but Soileau\u2019s prose about them is gorgeous and evocative. \u201cOpalescent rainbows stripe the creek,\u201d she writes in one instance; in another, \u201c[s]tinking riches rain down on their heads.\u201d There might be some rhetorical logic to that mismatch. As one of Soileau\u2019s characters points out, the names of oil rigs are often deeply ironic. \u201cBrazen Light, Brightwater Field, something like that, too pretty for the purpose,\u201d she writes.\u2014Allison Meakem<\/em><\/p>\n Priya Guns (Doubleday, 304 pp., $30, July 2026)<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n \u201cAs far back as I remember, I was a hustler,\u201d narrates the protagonist of Priya Guns\u2019s new novel. \u201cHustling was in my blood because my cells formed in times of shelling, and my mother had to run so we didn\u2019t die that day.\u201d<\/p>\n The American Dream\u2014and by extension, the immigrant dream\u2014has always been predicated on the hustle. In Hustle, Baby<\/em><\/a>, Guns amplifies that reality. Her novel has the spirit of Glengarry Glen Ross<\/em>, David Mamet\u2019s classic 1980s salesman drama, where a set of hucksters resort to unsavory methods in their quest for the good life (or a Cadillac, at least). This time, however, the main cast is a family of refugees who fled the Sri Lankan civil war and are just trying to get by in Toronto. They\u2019re just as foul-mouthed as Mamet\u2019s wheeler-dealers, but the stakes are higher.<\/p>\n The premise of Hustle, Baby<\/em> is straightforward. It\u2019s October 2000, and the family has until 9 a.m. on Dec. 15 to pay the landlord back rent or face eviction. Each of them has their own schemes for a quick buck as the clock ticks down: Dilo, the protagonist, upcharges her classmates for snacks and canned coffees; her mother puts her faith in God (and helps the family steal essentials from the local Walmart stand-in); and her aunt, a straight-talking former Tamil Tiger resistance fighter, tries to get in on a local scam. All three fall victim to a con man, who promises endless returns on investments via an opaque day-trading scheme.<\/p>\n Guns erupted on the literary scene with her 2023 debut novel, Your Driver Is Waiting<\/em>, a gender-swapped take on the classic film Taxi Driver<\/em>. Hustle, Baby<\/em> further develops the feverish and unsentimental voice of that book. If many immigrant novels evoke a sense of homeland longing, Guns quickly discards this notion. \u201c[D]on\u2019t stretch this into some pitiful story,\u201d the mother thinks. \u201cI come from paradise, that\u2019s true. But it was a place with venomous snakes, land mines, and bullets flying. There wasn\u2019t a single family who didn\u2019t know a person who died from a snake bite or two \u2026 who didn\u2019t know a person who\u2019d been killed.\u201d<\/p>\n Guns also has a feel for American life at the turn of the millennium: There\u2019s the pull of the megachurch, a toddler whose favorite programming is infomercials, a woman who drives by in a pink Caddy with veneers like \u201cChiclets\u201d after joining a multilevel marketing scheme. Not to mention the yearning and danger and straight-up farce of the early chatroom-infested internet. Admittedly, little in this book is subtle. As Dilo narrates early on, \u201cWe ran straight from bombs to carcinogens and consumerism.\u201d But as the action hammers on, reaching its (perhaps gratuitously) dark climax, it\u2019s hard not to appreciate Guns\u2019s swagger, her relentless interrogation of the tragicomic realities of the modern grind.\u2014Chloe Hadavas<\/em><\/p>\n The highly anticipated sequel to Scottish author Irvine Welsh\u2019s 1993 cult-classic Trainspotting<\/em>, Men in Love<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, reaches the U.S. market. Silvia Moreno-Garcia\u2019s latest noir, The Intrigue<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, follows a con man\u2019s antics in 1940s Mexico. A summer retreat at a British manor goes awry in Imogen Crimp\u2019s modern gothic, Give Me Everything You\u2019ve Got<\/em><\/strong><\/a>. The late French New Wave filmmaker \u00c9ric Rohmer\u2019s first novel, \u00c9lisabeth<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, is translated into English by Aaron Kerner. Bora Lee Reed\u2019s debut novel, Song for Another Home<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, tells of a family caught in the Korean War.<\/p>\n Jan Carson\u2019s Few and Far Between<\/em><\/strong><\/a> presents an alternate (and alternately haunting) history of Northern Ireland. A Russian spy ring infiltrates Washington in Traitors<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, Robert B. McCaw\u2019s old-school thriller. Tamil writer Jeyamohan\u2019s White Elephant<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, translated by Priyamvada Ramkumar, offers a post-colonial spin on Heart of Darkness<\/em>. In Valeria Luiselli\u2019s Beginning Middle End<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, a mother-daughter duo parse histories big and small on a trip to Sicily. And Venezuelan author Mar\u00eda Elena Mor\u00e1n makes her English-language debut with The Winds of Maracaibo<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, translated by Madeline Jones.\u2014CH<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This month, we\u2019re reading novels about two communities\u2014Cajuns in Louisiana and a Tamil immigrant family in Toronto\u2014coping with the hardships of North American life. Should the Waters Take Us Stephanie Soileau (Doubleday, 336 pp., $30, July 2026) This month, we\u2019re reading novels about two communities\u2014Cajuns in Louisiana and a Tamil immigrant family in Toronto\u2014coping with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35295,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Books-in-brief-fiction-foreign-policy-July-2026.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11611],"tags":[187,1114,6287,30,12263,25211,11749,1503,25210,25209,25208,11614,4369],"class_list":["post-35294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spyballoon-global-news","tag-baby","tag-books","tag-canada","tag-culture","tag-fp-weekend","tag-gunss","tag-homepage_regional_americas","tag-hustle","tag-priya","tag-soileaus","tag-stephanie","tag-united-states","tag-waters"],"rttpg_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Books-in-brief-fiction-foreign-policy-July-2026.png",0,0,false],"landscape":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Books-in-brief-fiction-foreign-policy-July-2026.png",0,0,false],"portraits":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Books-in-brief-fiction-foreign-policy-July-2026.png",0,0,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Books-in-brief-fiction-foreign-policy-July-2026.png",150,150,false],"medium":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Books-in-brief-fiction-foreign-policy-July-2026.png",300,300,false],"large":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Books-in-brief-fiction-foreign-policy-July-2026.png",1024,1024,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Books-in-brief-fiction-foreign-policy-July-2026.png",1536,1536,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Books-in-brief-fiction-foreign-policy-July-2026.png",2048,2048,false],"post-thumbnail":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Books-in-brief-fiction-foreign-policy-July-2026.png",370,265,false],"kava-thumb-s":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Books-in-brief-fiction-foreign-policy-July-2026.png",150,85,false],"kava-thumb-s-2":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Books-in-brief-fiction-foreign-policy-July-2026.png",230,230,false],"kava-thumb-m":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Books-in-brief-fiction-foreign-policy-July-2026.png",400,400,false],"kava-thumb-m-vertical":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Books-in-brief-fiction-foreign-policy-July-2026.png",370,500,false],"kava-thumb-m-2":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Books-in-brief-fiction-foreign-policy-July-2026.png",570,450,false],"kava-thumb-l":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Books-in-brief-fiction-foreign-policy-July-2026.png",1170,650,false],"kava-thumb-xl":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Books-in-brief-fiction-foreign-policy-July-2026.png",1920,1080,false],"kava-thumb-masonry":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Books-in-brief-fiction-foreign-policy-July-2026.png",600,999,false],"kava-thumb-justify":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Books-in-brief-fiction-foreign-policy-July-2026.png",640,640,false],"kava-thumb-justify-2":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Books-in-brief-fiction-foreign-policy-July-2026.png",1280,640,false]},"rttpg_author":{"display_name":"#RiseCelestialStudios","author_link":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/author\/ralph-c\/"},"rttpg_comment":0,"rttpg_category":"SPYBALLOON GLOBAL NEWS<\/a>","rttpg_excerpt":"This month, we\u2019re reading novels about two communities\u2014Cajuns in Louisiana and a Tamil immigrant family in Toronto\u2014coping with the hardships of North American life. Should the Waters Take Us Stephanie Soileau (Doubleday, 336 pp., $30, July 2026) This month, we\u2019re reading novels about two communities\u2014Cajuns in Louisiana and a Tamil immigrant family in Toronto\u2014coping with…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35294"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35296,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35294\/revisions\/35296"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Should the Waters Take Us<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n
Hustle, Baby: A Novel<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n
July Releases, In Brief<\/strong><\/h3>\n