Ken Wells grew up on the banks of Bayou Black in Louisiana Cajun country and began his writing career as a nineteen-year-old covering car wrecks and alligator sightings for his hometown newspaper. He was a reporter for four years with the Miami Herald, where he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and a writer and editor for The Wall Street Journal for twenty-four years. Wells left the Journal in 2006, to take a job as a senior editor and writer for Condé Nast Portfolio. He is also the author of four novels set in the Cajun bayous.