There is an emphasis on the placage system, common law marriages between white Creoles and free colored women and their children. We get to walk the streets of pre Civil War New Orleans (1830's) experiencing relations between whites, blacks, Creoles, French, free colored and those uncouth Americans with their ugly, clunky language. Barbara Hambly depicts a time, place and society rarely covered, or even mentioned, in fiction.
This one doesn't disappoint on any of those levels. It's like the cholera."Īlthough this is a mystery series, I read them for the historical aspects and the characters. "One thing I've learned," January said with a smile, "love is beyond comprehension.
In between you have the cruelty of the diseases, yellow fever and cholera, rampaging through the city, the accepted and challenged injustices based upon the color of ones skin or sex, poisoning, slavery, kidnapping, death, birth, friendship, the joys of learning and music, healing and renewal. From gut wrenching, almost stomach emptying scenes of human depravity and cruelty to the beautiful simplicity of one human taking the gigantic step of learning to trust another human. I just couldn't come up with any other words, my mind was still trying to filter through all of the things I had just experienced. Wow, my first impression upon closing this book, I was actually muttering the word over and over to myself until Ron asked me what I was doing. Risking both his life and his freedom, Ben pursues the truth through a lush and fevered world of opulent town houses, grim cemeteries, and raucous taverns. Before Ben can unpick one story from the other, Cora disappears into the torrid night. Yet it seems that Emily Redfern herself, iron-willed and socially ambitious, had cause to wish her profligate husband dead. Soon, however, he learns that Cora is accused of murdering her lecherous master, Otis Redfern, and poisoning his wife almost to death. Though January's certain she's a runaway, he agrees to try to pass a message to the man she seeks.
Empty except for Cora Chouteau, a dark-skinned plantation waif come to town in search of her lover, sold in slavery to one of its prominent families. Then his work as a music teacher takes him out again into the fetid, empty midday streets.
Benjamin January's Paris medical training keeps him all night long with the dying at Charity Hospital. The summer of 1833 has been one of brazen heat and brutal pestilence, as the city is stalked by Bronze John - the popular name for the deadly cholera epidemic that tests the healing skills of doctor and voodoo alike.
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