Catfish, is a coming-of-age-story set in South Louisiana during the Jim Crow 1960s, steeped in the complex and conflicted culture of that time. In Catfish, Susie Burton, a headstrong young white girl born to a prominent local family, narrates her journey from complacent daughter to rebellious, questioning teen. From the vantage point of the present day, forty-five years after the events of this novel, Susie tells of her discovery that her own family—enshrined within the walls of an affluent antebellum home, to all appearances an ideal Southern clan—was not at all what it seemed. Though this knowledge could have easily destroyed her, she was buoyed by the love and loyalty of a local black family whose patriarch is the novel’s namesake: Catfish.
A masterful storyteller, Catfish narrates tales that take root in Susie, weaving into her dawning consciousness the terror, cruelty, and surprising richness of post-Civil-War, southern plantation life. Through Susie’s relationship with Catfish and his extended family, especially Rodney, the young black man who becomes her first love, Susie and her young friends learn to take charge of their destinies. There is love here, but it is love shadowed by a family’s betrayal and the violence of the local Klan.
Like The Help in its historical setting and trenchant exploration of the Jim Crow South, Catfish will leave readers questioning how much has really changed over the last four decades.
It is Madelyn Edwards's commitment to human rights and social and economic justice that steered her to write this story. She was born and raised in Marksville, LA, population 5,000, a town much like the fictional Jean Ville in which Susie comes of age.