The Arizona Series

It’s 1984, and 15-year-old Arizona is doing his best to take care of his younger brothers and sister while their daddy drives a truck cross-country and spends his paycheck on booze and gambling. In small-town Southwestern Louisiana, his family is known as the lowest of the low, and they say it’s on account of a family curse that’s so ugly, no one would dare speak of it. Then Arizona’s daddy loses his job, and things go from bad to worse. He baits Arizona into a fight, and their brawl results in him and his brothers and sister being split up by Social Services.

Arizona started a new life when his birth daddy, Gaston Bondurant, found him living with a foster family and facing criminal charges for assaulting his abusive stepfather. Plucked from the squalor of rural Acadiana, Arizona was thrust into New Orleans high society and an elite New England boarding school. Home for the summer, Arizona sets out to find his younger brothers and sister, who were scattered to different places when their family was torn apart. Along the way, he reunites with his 10th grade sweetheart, Preston Montclair, who still holds a torch for him.

After graduating from Columbia with plans to start a writing career in New York City, Arizona is called back to bayou country by tragic news. His youngest brother Douglas is dead. The circumstances are unthinkable, and Arizona is thrust into the struggles of a family he left behind.