Background
Tim Gautreaux was born on October 19, 1947, in Morgan City, Louisiana, United States. He is a son of Minos Gautreaux, a tugboat captain, and Florence Gautreaux.
Nicholls State University, Thibodaux, Louisiana, United States
In 1969 Tim Gautreaux received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Nicholls State University.
University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina, United States
In 1972 Tim Gautreaux obtained a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of South Carolina.
(In this collection of stories, Tim Gautreaux chronicles t...)
In this collection of stories, Tim Gautreaux chronicles the lives of "ordinary" people who face extraordinary circumstances and decisions: a farmer faced with the prospect of raising his infant granddaughter; a young man who falls in love with a voice on the radio; a train engineer who causes a colossal disaster. In stories filled with heart and humor, event and consequence, the customs and culture of Louisiana come to life in the hands of a writer who blends rare talent with an even more unusual humanity.
https://www.amazon.com/Same-Place-Things-Stories/dp/0312169949/?tag=2022091-20
1996
(Bringing the same light and gentle understanding that he ...)
Bringing the same light and gentle understanding that he did to the story collection Same Place, Same Things, author Tim Gautreaux tells the tale of Paul and Colette, star-crossed and factious lovers struggling to make it in rural south Louisiana. When Colette, fed up with small town life, perceives yet another indiscretion by the fun-loving Paul, she heads for Los Angeles, with big dreams and Paul in tow. Paul's attempts to draw his beautiful young wife back home to the Cajun bayou, and back to his heart, make up a tale filled with warmth, devotion and majestically constructed scenes of Southern life, in The Next Step in the Dance.
https://www.amazon.com/Next-Step-Dance-Novel-ebook/dp/B00AJI09YU/?tag=2022091-20
1998
(In eleven raucous, touching stories, Tim Gautreaux's Weld...)
In eleven raucous, touching stories, Tim Gautreaux's Welding with Children traces the course of sin and redemption through the lives of small-town women and men in Louisiana. His unforgettable characters include a grandfather who discovers, while taking care of his grandchildren, that they are growing up without any sense at all of right and wrong; a camera repairman who discovers a woman's secret in her undeveloped film; and a one-armed hitchhiker who changes the life of the man who picks her up.
https://www.amazon.com/Welding-Children-Stories-Tim-Gautreaux/dp/0312428790/?tag=2022091-20
1999
(In a lumber camp in the Louisiana cypress forest, a world...)
In a lumber camp in the Louisiana cypress forest, a world of mud and stifling heat where men labor under back-breaking conditions, the Aldridge brothers try to repair a broken bond. Randolph Aldridge is the mill’s manager, sent by his father - the mill owner - to reform both the damaged mill and his damaged older brother. Byron Aldridge is the mill's lawman, a shell-shocked World War I veteran given to stunned silences and sudden explosions of violence that make him a mystery to Randolph and a danger to himself. Deep in the swamp, in this place of water moccasins, whiskey, and wild card games, these brothers become embroiled in a lethal feud with a powerful gangster. In a tale full of raw emotion as supple as a saw blade, The Clearing is a mesmerizing journey into the trials that define men’s souls.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00IIAZZ9K/?tag=2022091-20
2003
(A masterful novel set in 1920s Louisiana, The Missing is ...)
A masterful novel set in 1920s Louisiana, The Missing is the story of Sam Simoneaux, a floorwalker at a New Orleans department store. When a little girl is kidnapped on Sam’s watch he is haunted by guilt, grief, and ghosts from his own troubled past. Determined to find her, Sam sets out on a journey through a world of music and violence, where riverboats teem with drinking and dancing, and where dark swamplands conceal those who choose to live by their own laws. With the fate of the stolen child looming, The Missing vividly depicts an America lurching away from war, where civilization is only beginning to penetrate the hinterlands, and a man must choose between compassion and vengeance.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001UI01TG/?tag=2022091-20
2009
(A petty thief is bested by a widow and her card-playing f...)
A petty thief is bested by a widow and her card-playing friends; a farmer must cope with raising his baby granddaughter; a train engineer inadvertently causes a major disaster and finds himself amidst a media frenzy; a young man falls in love with a voice on the radio; and a camera repairman discovers a woman's family history in a roll of undeveloped film. Ordinary people are confronted with extraordinary situations, with results that are sometimes comic, sometimes tragic, but always life-changing. In stories filled with heart and humour, Tim Gautreaux explores the stresses and strains of everyday life as his characters struggle to make amends for their mistakes and hope for different, better days to come.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0340834552/?tag=2022091-20
2010
(After the stunning historical novels The Clearing and The...)
After the stunning historical novels The Clearing and The Missing, Tim Gautreaux now ranges freely through contemporary life with twelve new stories and eight from previous collections. Most are set in his beloved Louisiana, many hard by or on the Mississippi River, others in North Carolina and even in midwinter Minnesota. But generally it's heat, humidity, and bugs that beset his people as they wrestle with affairs of the heart, matters of faith, and the pros and cons of tight-knit communities - a remarkable cast of characters, primarily of the working class, proud and knowledgeable about the natural or mechanical world, their lives marked by a prized stereo or a magical sewing machine retrieved from a locked safe, boats and card games and casinos, grandparents and grandchildren and those in between, their experiences leading them to the ridiculous or the scarifying or the sublime; most of them striving for what's right and good, others tearing off in the opposite direction.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01EQ2OXGY/?tag=2022091-20
2017
Tim Gautreaux was born on October 19, 1947, in Morgan City, Louisiana, United States. He is a son of Minos Gautreaux, a tugboat captain, and Florence Gautreaux.
In 1969 Tim Gautreaux received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Nicholls State University. In 1972 he obtained a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of South Carolina.
In 1972 Tim Gautreaux became a writer-in-residence, a professor of English and director of creative writing at Southeastern Louisiana University. Around 2002 he retired from teaching, serving there for thirty years.
Gautreaux made his book debut with the collection of short stories Same Place, Same Things. They include ‘The Courtship of Merlin LeBlanc,” about a widower tasked with raising his granddaughter, and "Same Place, Same Things," in which a repairman sent to fix a pump finds more than a pump that needs repair.
(A petty thief is bested by a widow and her card-playing f...)
2010(In this collection of stories, Tim Gautreaux chronicles t...)
1996(Bringing the same light and gentle understanding that he ...)
1998(After the stunning historical novels The Clearing and The...)
2017(In a lumber camp in the Louisiana cypress forest, a world...)
2003(In eleven raucous, touching stories, Tim Gautreaux's Weld...)
1999(A masterful novel set in 1920s Louisiana, The Missing is ...)
2009Tim Gautreaux once said "I've always been a Roman Catholic, since baptism, since birth."
Tim Gautreaux's hobby is a collecting antique machinery, especially steam whistles.
In 1972 Tim Gautreaux married Winbornc Howell, an English professor. They have two children: Robert and Thomas.