Tim Gautreaux was born in 1947 in the oil town of Morgan City, south Louisiana, where he also grew up, and The Last Step in the Dance - his first novel - takes place almost exclusively in Tiger Island. Gautreaux's main aim is to draw a picture of families surviving the oil bust in the 1980s.
Of Arcadian descent, Gautreaux is one of the very few writers about Cajun culture, and this book is filled with references about French-influenced culture in Louisiana, although he refuses any attempts to label him.
Margaret Donovan Bauer has written Understanding Tim Gautreaux (Columbia, S.C. : University of South Carolina Press, c.2010), and a link to a description of Gautreaux and his work, including an interview with some brief audio recordings of the author, are here: 'An Interview with Tim Gautreaux: "Cartographer of Louisiana Back Roads"'.
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