A sprightly, deeply personal narrative about how gumbo-for 250 years a Cajun and Creole secret-has become one of the world’s most beloved dishes.

Ken Wells grew up in the Cajun bastion of Bayou Black, eating his French-speaking momma’s gumbo and living what he calls the Gumbo Life-where the rhythms of the day cling to rituals of a previous century and gumbo begins with a chicken chased down in the yard. He later would roam the world as a journalist but never forgot his roots.

In Gumbo Life, Wells returns, taking readers on a lively tour that includes visits to a coot-cooking gumbo group, a factory producing gumbo in insane quantities, and Commander’s Palace, an iconic restaurant where high-style Creole cooking and reenergized Cajun cuisine merged to change the culinary landscape. Along the way, Wells explores the soup’s global profile-including how it got to China and who won New York City’s Gumbo War. A lively travelogue and moving memoir, Gumbo Life is a celebration-of a place, a dish, and the cultures that created it.