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One of the two authors of this review was significantly more excited about seeing Beasts of the Southern Wild than the other. Jacqueline greatly anticipated seeing a movie that depicted this very unique part of America. Having grown up in southern Louisiana where the movie was filmed, she claims that this swampland estuary at the mouth of the Mississippi River is still home, where the “cah-bins ” (Cajun for home) exist in a locale that is at the mercy of river floods from the north and gulf storms from the south. Modernity has brought massive levees, locks, and pumping systems in a less-than-perfect attempt to protect the two major cities in the area, Baton Rouge and New Orleans, from devastating floods. Before the levees, though, the culture was shaped by adapting rather than controlling the capriciousness of the weather. The swamps came to be home to an untouchable people. Settled by exiles from Canada’s French Acadian provinces, southern Louisiana became a melting pot of Acadians (Cajuns) and creoles—persons of ethnic/racial mixtures that include French, Spanish, African, and/or Native American ancestries. Although Cajuns have been at the mercies of the water, they also have been its beneficiaries. The swamp and adjacent gulf abound with all manner of wildlife, especiall