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Donna Hankins signs a copy of her first novel, Louisiana Cajun Girl, which is set in Avoyelles Parish. {Photo by Raymond L. Daye}

Bordelonville author releases first novel, set in Avoyelles

 

   For much of her life, people told her she had a knack for telling stories “and should write a book.”
   Donna Hankins always chalked the comments up to just being compliments from friends and family. Eventually, she decided to put her ideas and stories down on paper.
   The result was her first novel, Louisiana Cajun Girl, published by Balboa Press.
   Hankins was born and raised in New Orleans but has lived about 30 of her 60 years in Avoyelles Parish, which is the northern most French speaking parish in the Cajun-Creole French triangle.
   After working 22 years in the state Probation & Parole Office in this and neighboring parishes, she retired and is now living in Bordelonville.
  When she was thinking about putting her stories down in a book, she spoke to a woman in the publishing industry who said Hankins should write books “because it is what I am meant to do.”
  Hankins said the woman told her to develop a daily schedule where she would carve out specific time to sit at her computer and write or do research on the story she is writing. She chose 7-10 p.m. as her writing time.
   “Every night I was excited to see what would happen next in the story,” she said. “It was exciting. I started the book in August 2012 and finished in February 2013.”
  She set the book aside until last year.
  “I saw a commercial for Balboa Press, about publishing a book, so I contacted them to discuss my novel,” Hankins said. “I decided that if there was one thing I was going to do just for me, this was it.”
   She worked with Balboa for six or seven months and the book was published earlier this year.
   She has been encouraged by the response to the book, and “will definitely write again. I have already started my second one and I have three different books going on in my head at the same time.”
   Hankins said Louisiana Cajun Girl is a “book about the value of love, regardless of a person’s belief system.”
   In the book, the main character, Marcie, was a tomboy who was taught by her father to be independent and not to love or be trusting of other people.
   After the father dies, he realizes he was wrong and tries to rectify his mistake with the help of a recluse called "Swamp Man."
   “She learns to love and learns a lot of other life lessons that help her grow as a person and become a woman,” Hankins said.
   The story is set in Avoyelles Parish and the Spring Bayou area.
  The book is available  through www.shopavoyelles.com, Balboa Press, Books-A-Million, Barnes & Noble, Hastings book stores and locally at the Wishing Well and Sears in Marksville, Avoyelles Commission of Tourism and  Mansura Drug Store in Mansura, Le Maison on La. Hwy. 115 and the Avoyelles Library. 
   Hankins said she would like to see the book turned into a movie in the future.
   “I think it would help to bring people to this area so they could see the beauty of Louisiana,” she said. “There really is no place like home.”