About the Book

A compelling blend of true crime and memoir tracing the author’s investigation into the kidnapping and murder of her great-grandfather in 1980s Louisiana and the reverberations on her family and community throughout the decades

"Riveting and atmospheric, Home of the Happy is also a heartfelt grappling with a trauma in the author’s family and her attempts to unravel its secrets once and for all. LaHaye Fontenot’s writing is urgent, fueled not just by a desire for justice but by love for her ancestors and the Cajun community of south Louisiana. A must-read for true crime and mystery fans."— Ana Reyes, New York Times bestselling author of The House in the Pines

On January 16, 1983, Aubrey LaHaye’s body was found floating in the Bayou Nezpique. His kidnapping ten days before sparked “the biggest manhunt in the history of Evangeline Parish.” But his descendants would hear the story as lore, in whispers of the dreadful day the FBI landed a helicopter in the family’s front lawn and set out on horseback to search for the seventy-year-old banker.

Decades later, Aubrey’s great-granddaughter Jordan LaHaye Fontenot asked her father, the parish urologist, to tell the full story. He revealed that to this day, every few months, one of his patients will bring up his grandfather’s murder, and the man accused of killing him, John Brady Balfa, who remains at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola serving a life sentence. They’ll say, in so many words: “Dr. Marcel, I really don’t think that Balfa boy killed your granddaddy.” 

For readers of Maggie Nelson’s The Red Parts and Emma Copley Eisenberg's The Third Rainbow Girl, Home of the Happy unravels the layers of suffering borne of this brutal crime—and investigates the mysteries that linger beneath generations of silence. Is it possible that an innocent man languishes in prison, still, wrongly convicted of murdering the author’s great-grandfather? 

Critical Praise

“In an impressive feat of both memoir and original reporting, Jordan LaHaye Fontenot has cast a reporter’s gaze on her own family’s buried secrets. But the real value to Home of the Happy lies beyond the brutal crime at its center, in showing us Acadiana and its people as we’ve never seen them before—mired in complexity, rife with beauty, and haunted by injustice.” — Walter Isaacson

"Riveting and atmospheric, Home of the Happy is also a heartfelt grappling with a trauma in the author’s family and her attempts to unravel its secrets once and for all. LaHaye Fontenot’s writing is urgent, fueled not just by a desire for justice but by love for her ancestors and the Cajun community of south Louisiana. A must-read for true crime and mystery fans." — Ana Reyes, New York Times bestselling author of The House in the Pines

“Simultaneously lurid and lyrical, gothic and graceful, surreal and serene. . . [Home of the Happy is] memoir, reportage, and investigative journalism, wrapped in a propulsive narrative that tells the tale of a family and a place across time.” — Country Roads

"No one wants to belong to the murdered great-grandfathers club, but I feel better knowing that Jordan LaHaye Fontenot is here with me, tackling generational trauma and secrecy with tenderness, ethics, and the precision of a surgeon. Home of the Happy is true crime at its best. I simply cannot fathom how LaHaye Fontenot not only conducted her own investigation of her great-grandfather’s murder, but braided it with stirring personal and historical anecdotes into a taut and thrilling masterpiece. I absolutely inhaled it."  — Ruth Madievsky, bestselling author of All-Night Pharmacy

"Jordan LaHaye's Home of the Happy is more than an expertly reported exploration of the murder of her great-grandfather; it opens a lens onto one of the most profoundly unique and troubled geographical regions in America where a string of tragedies—some of which befall LaHaye's family after her great-grandfather's killing—and economic calamities almost tangibly hang in the air, like the thick toxins spewed out by its chemical plants." — Ethan Brown, New York Times bestselling author of Murder in the Bayou

"Relentlessly reported, intricately crafted, and told with the heartbreaking lyricism of a true Cajun poet, Home of the Happy is a towering achievement of nonfiction storytelling. It’s a mystery full of swampy intrigue, an unflinching meditation on the nature of justice, a labyrinth of small town conspiracies, and a cultural history of remarkable scope and insight. Jordan LaHaye Fontenot is a revelatory new voice for Acadiana, and America." — Joshua Wheeler, author of Acid West

"Home of the Happy is a brilliant debut, gripping and generous in equal measure. Jordan LaHaye Fontenot looks at her family’s tragic history with empathy but also an unrelenting commitment to understand what really happened to her great-grandfather, which leads her and her fortunate readers to examine the machinations of power, privilege, and punishment in her always beloved, sometimes corrupt Cajun hometown." — Emily Nemens, author of The Cactus League

"As a young journalist taking a deep-dive into a 40 year family tragedy, the kidnapping and murder of a great grandfather she never met, Jordan LaHaye Fontenot turned over every rock, stone and pebble to get to the truth. The result is a fascinating, gripping, irresistible gumbo of true crime and family memoir. Her guided tour through a Cajun community few of us are familiar with is a true tour de force." — Charles Salzberg, award-winning author of Second Story Man and Man on the Run

“Home of the Happy is far more than a simple whodunnit: with prose as elegant as it is efficient, Fontenot describes a long-passed form of Cajun culture: a rich tapestry of hospitality, spiced cuisine, fiddle music, and Cajun French that creates a setting that is itself thick as a roux. Her investigative work will leave readers both impressed and inspired, both decided and doubting. Home of the Happy is a feat, a rich weave of the personal and the political.” — Jacinda Townsend, author of Mother Country

"In this absorbing and unsettling book, Jordan LaHaye Fontenont pairs meticulous and conscientious research with vivid scene-setting—peeling back the layers on a crime, and a family tragedy, that for too long languished unconsidered. More than a crime story, though, it is a meditation on storytelling itself, offering important lessons about what families and communities do to preserve their sense of themselves." — Boyce Upholt, author of The Great River

"Whispered stories surrounding a family tragedy before she was born inspired Home of the Happy, Jordan LaHaye Fontenot’s fearless and intensely personal tale of her great-grandfather’s murder forty years ago. Opening 'a fracture in the cycle of silence' with her reportorial tenacity, Fontenot’s probing and often poetic dive into her family’s Louisiana roots and the place’s landscape and culture deserves a place alongside In Cold Blood and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil as atmospheric crime stories that are also literary page-turners." — Jay Jennings, editor of Escape Velocity

"What really happened to Jordan LaHaye's great grandfather, who was kidnapped and murdered in the family's small Cajun town years ago? This magnificent, devastating tale of a journalist turning her gaze on her own family—its history, its mysteries, and its community entanglements—will stay with me for a long, long time. It is a meticulously-reported, luminously told page turner. You won't be able to put it down—or to forget it."  — Lauren Markham, author of A Map of Future Ruins

"Home of the Happy is a stunning act of personal journalism by a writer with the courage to break long silences. In atmospheric, page-turning style, Jordan LaHaye Fontenot weaves a murder investigation, a legal thriller, and an intergenerational family saga that illuminates more than a century of life on the Acadian prairie. By retracing the lives and deaths that haunt her family, she reveals truths about power and punishment in America that will haunt you long after you close the book." — Chris Feliciano Arnold, author of The Third Bank of the River

“Home of the Happy is a fierce clash of poetic talent and gripping investigation. Much like Bayou Nezpique, where the author's great-grandfather was found dead in 1983, LaHaye’s story of the murder meanders—frighteningly at times, beautifully at others—weaving the striking tale of a place, its people, and the writer’s sharp-eyed journey within.” — Micah Fields, author of We Hold Our Breath

“With tenderness and honesty, Jordan LaHaye Fontenot excavates the painful histories many in her family have spent lifetimes trying to forget. In doing so, she reveals the beauty of a culture and way of life that is rapidly vanishing. A gripping mystery and a poignant meditation on heritage, memory, and the stories we inherit, Home of the Happy is a can’t-put-it-down page turner, a stunning, must-read debut by a brilliant new voice.” — Jennifer S. Davis, author of We Were Angry

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Product Details

• ISBN: 9780063257962
• ISBN 10: 0063257963
• Imprint: Mariner Books
• On Sale: 04/01/2025
• Pages: 336
• List Price:40.50 CAD
• BISAC1 : TRUE CRIME / Historical
• BISAC2 : HISTORY / United States / State & Local / South (AL, AR, FL, GA, KY, LA, MS, NC, SC, TN, VA, WV)
• BISAC3 : BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs
• BISAC4 : SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology / Rural
• BISAC5 : SOCIAL SCIENCE / Violence in Society

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