Bay St. Louis, Mississippi (Location Key)

Bay St. Louis is a real town on Mississippi's Gulf Coast. In 1905, when it's mentioned in The Reivers, its population would have been about 3,000. The young Lucius Priest asks Boon if he "knows the difference between Bay St. Louis and Mobile" (44). Mobile is in Alabama, not Mississippi, but he might also be thinking about the difference between a resort town like Bay St. Louis and a major port city - about 40,000 people lived in Mobile in 1905. Lucius' mother's Lessep parents live, and his grandfather dies, in Bay St. Louis.