Louisiana Books

I read this book last year. I couldn't put it down. It was lent to me by my very good friend Peggy. Peg is Jim's sister,(also mentioned in the book). Because I Know Jim Little, it made the book more intriguing. This is a must read, weather you know Jim and his family or not.

I know this man & have spent countless hours with him. Both visiting him in prison (for 4 years, every week) and out in Texas. A remarkable human being. I trust him with my life and I don't say that easily. Jim Little is a unique person. I consider him as close as a brother. This book brought me into his life & I have renmained there. No one could ask for a more devoted friend in life. Jim Little is unique in so many ways.
Trust me, this is a great story. And an incedable individual.
We have been friends since I first met him in prison 13 years ago.

I purchased this book out of curiosity. I used the book to spice up my marriage. I drove my husband, over the weekends, to these places without him having to plan at all. He was very surprised and really enjoyed himself, I must say! I used the book for class field trips. The places are all close by and economical visits. I used the book to take my child places she had never seen. What a surprise for her to have such an unusual weekend! The book is very funny and educational. Thanks, Keith Odom!

I thought the book was very well written. There needs to be an way to update the book online whenever changes are made. I would recommend the book to anyone interested in unusual tours and good food.

I read this book months ago; it has stayed in a warm place in my memory for about a year. Browsing through the stacks at Amazon, I come across it and am surprised that only one person has reviewed it. It's well written, it's an interesting insight into a life different from mine in almost every way -- money, geography, religion, vocabulary, etc. Yet my life and this fictional life are still very American. Reading it, learning about a different America from a great Amercain writer, made me a better person. It gets my highest recommendation.

Glancy is an underratted underknown writer of incredible sensitivity and expression. Her prose is consistently understated, but that doesn't keep it from conveying anguish and complexity in this story of an innocent girl in a gritty landscape. Closest to Kaye Gibbons, but Gibbons is looser. Oprah Oprah, why haven't you read this one???

William Humphrey's second novel The Ordways (1964) is not as well known as his more celebrated first novel Home From the Hill (1958). The novel's early reception suffered from its fragmented structure, as it is separated into 4 distinct sections: In a Country Churchyard, The Stepchild, Sam Ordway's Revenge, and Family Reunion. Like Home From the Hill, the plot is intricate and convoluted. It various digressions, references to unrevealed elements and events, and frequent narrative jumps between past and present slowly reveals the story in bits and pieces.
Humphrey's writing was often compared to Faulkner, an influence Humphrey vigorously denied. Insightful comments from two reviewers are revealing: "[Humphrey's] cosmos is less awry than Faulkner's, and his syntax is far more agreeable," and "Humphrey gives us...a piece of Faulkner in which the obscurities have been clarified and the crooked made straight."
Nearly 40 years after its publication, the loose structure and the Faulknerian inheritance of The Ordways are no longer hindrances to its value. It was unjust to Humphrey that the book was viewed as a shortfall compared to his first.
The story contains two main elements. First is the retold saga of the migration of the Ordway family ancestors from Tennessee to Texas, which is recounted in the section entitled In a Country Churchyard. The saga relates the travails of Civil War soldier Thomas Ordway, his incapacitating injury, his wife Ella's determination to keep the family together, their eventful migration to Texas, and the remainder of their lives in Texas. This remembrance is told during Remembrance Day, a yearly event where families clean cemetery housing the graves of their ancestors. In a Country Churchyard is brilliant writing and story-telling, both emotional and hilarious. Much of the Ordway history is extravagant and over-the-top, yet deeply moving at the same time. Bert Almon, Humphrey's primary literary critic, points out that Humphrey's desire was to satirize a number of southern and western cultural myths: the glorification of the lost southern cause of the Civil War, excessive southern piety to family, glamorization of the Wild West and cowboys, and an obsession with the past. Despite his extra-textual satirical goal, Humphrey does not come off as nasty or sarcastic. In fact, his love and affection are clearly on display. In a Country Churchyard is fiction, writing, and story-telling at its finest.
The second main element is an account spanning nearly 30 years of the kidnapping of Sam Ordway's son Ned by a neighbor, Sam's futile attempt to track down his son and the perpetrator, and at last the reunion of father and son about 30 years after the fact. The Stepchild describes the loss of the child and the step-by-step realization that he has been kidnapped. Slow, yet dramatic, The Stepchild is more straightforward story-telling compared to In a Country Churchyard. However, the events in The Stepchild, frequently and tantalizingly foreshadowed in In a Country Churchyard, make the prologue even more masterful and gives The Stepchild an extra poignancy. Sam Ordway's Revenge is a humorous recital of Sam Ordway's ridiculous search for his son. Ludicrous events happen time and again; this section perhaps reveals Humphrey's satirical intent the most. It does not continue the same sense of drama and devotion of the previous two sections and thus I found it somewhat weaker. Family Reunion is also weak compared to the book's first two sections. It is similarly humorous, capturing the celebrations across Texas for the reunion of Sam and his son Ned. The reunion of father and son provides some relief to the reader after the central tragedy of the kidnapping, but one wonders if the book may have been more powerful had the reunion never occurred.
Mr. Humphrey's lack of literary success was a source of great disappointment to him. I am similarly at a loss why his career did not take off as did those of his less-talented contemporaries. William Humphrey died in August 1997. I hope that his extremely worthy works The Ordways, Home from the Hill, and Farther Off from Heaven will not be forgotten. Everything you could ever want of a writer is there.
Thanks to LSU Press, two of these fine books are still available. A word to the fiction connoisseur - buy them while you can.

This is an important book for every Texan to read because it is a family history so many of us share. William Humphries viidly follows the day-to-day life and adventures of our ancestors from the time they pull up stakes in Arksansas or Alabama to putting down roots in Texas.

In the years after the Civil War, the South faced the challenge of redefining itself. After the initial steps made during Reconstruction, the South eventually embraced the development of a more diversified economy than the cotton-dependent antebellum period. This period is the subject of C. Vann Woodward's classic work, which chronicles the emergence of the region at the end of the 19th century.

Woodward argues that the "New" South constituted a sharp break in Southern history. In the years after Reconstruction, a group of pro-business elites (which Woodward terms "Redeemers") took power in the states of the South. These governments were run frugally, with an eye towards minimizing the tax burden on businessmen and property holders. Their policies in office were designed to maximize the benefits for their class, providing extensive economic breaks for railroads, industries, and insurance companies which succeeded in developing the region's economy. Success came at the expense of educational and social programs, which, starved of funds, failed to provide for the needs of the populace. The result was a region of great poverty, run for the benefit of financiers in the North and a small group of men within the South.

Such iron control was bound to be contested by disadvantaged groups, and Woodward spends several chapters discussing these challenges. The first came during the years immediately after Reconstruction, when the Redeemers struggled for the reins of government with groups seeking social improvements. Reformers won in a few states (most notably in Virginia), but the waning of Northern interest - and with it, federal aid - made theirs a losing struggle. The next challenge came in the 1890s with the rise of Populism, the culmination of the agrarian revolt that began with the Farmers' Alliance movement of the previous decades. While the Populists scored some notable political victories, as Woodward puts it "[i]t was pretty clear by 1892 that the controlling forces in America would be no more reconciled to a Populist South than they had been to a planter-Confederate South or a Carpetbagger-freedman South."

Close on the heels of Populism, however, was Progressivism. Though drawing to some extent on Populism, Progressivism was primarily an urban movement comprised of the middle class, particularly small businessmen. They joined with the remnants of the agrarian protestors to decry the monopolistic economic control of the region by a few (deemed "foreign") capitalist elites. Though the old Redeemer regime succeeded in blunting much of their effort, the Southern progressives did succeed in getting Woodrow Wilson elected to the presidency - the first Southerner to occupy the White House since Andrew Johnson and a powerful symbol of the South's success in returning to the national political scene.

Written over half a century ago, Woodward's book is still the starting point for understanding the modern South, shaping the way we think of the subject as few other books have. Though modified and supplemented by subsequent studies, it still informs how we view the era and how it shaped the country in which we live. As such, it remains indispensable reading for students of American history, as well as those seeking a better understanding of our nation today.

This work, along with the "Strange Career of Jim Crow" form the basis of much of scholarly study on the south for the last 40 years. Most strikingly, he shows the relationship between economic and poltical reform and the issue of race. Demagougery on the issue of race prevented reform movements liket he POpulists from ever proving relief for improverished farmers. Perhaps the most memorable line is "Progressivism was for white men only." He demonstrates how the same people who put in place reforms such as city manager governments, railraod commissions and other "good government reforms" were also the people who disenfrachised blacks and segregated public facilities. Woodward shows clearly the interrelation between race and class in the south at the end of the 19th century. A must read for any student of U.S. history.

This is the story of the brigade (in the Civil War, from 5000 to 2000 men or so depending on the stage of the war) of Kentuckians who fought for the Confederacy. Kentucky being occupied relatively early in the war, they fought on far from home through the war.

Davis does well at covering the breadth of experience of soldiers: the life of the private in the ranks, as well as of the senior officer, is well researched. He captures the unique cultural distinctions of Kentucky quite nicely: masters at obtaining bourbon, an informal approach, raw courage, and love of horses. The bungling of generals is not soft-pedaled, which is just as well considering how much the Orphans suffered from it.

Worth adding to any Civil War library, but of particular interest to Kentuckian history buffs.

Davis tells the story of the how the Orphan Brigade came about which also covers daily camp life, individual stories and how the regiments formed. It is very clear just how the regiments were grouped and organized through descriptive writing. Many stories of soldiers hard fighting in their history at places such as Shiloh, Chickamauga, Murfreesboro and their dreaded marches in Mississippi around Vicksburg is covered. This book answers questions I had like: Just how did they fight? Who was in command? Who died? What became of the regiments after their numbers dwindled? Davis easily answers all of these and tells the story of the Orphan Brigade from beginning to end. This book is great for anyone looking to gain information on Western Campaigns and gain further knowledge on Kentuckians who had the odds stacked against them. It is perfect to gain an understanding about Kentucky in the Civil War and those who chose to fight for the south that lived there.

anyone who reads and enjoys this book should know that it was credited as the main source for the book by anne rice " feast of all saints" and the subsequent movie of the same title produced by shotime in 2000 2001. a distant or not so distant relative of the author. my grandmother's maiden name is desdunes and we lived in haiti.

I have the first book Rodolphe L. Desdunes wrote
and I enjoyed it. Also I am doing research on my ancestry
so the book came out just in time.H e is my father's GGG
uncle.

PS:once again I have really enjoyed both of his books.

Thank You

This is a beautifully photographed tribute to one of the unique American cities. Though the book was first published in the 80's the pictures still resonate. New Orleans went through a building boom during this time so most of it's best modern buildings are represented along with all the historic ones. I loved the views of the Quarter, you just never see it this way, even from the top of the Marriott. I really appreciated the fact that Mr. Gleason also included pictures of significant buildings around New Orleans, like Oak Alley and the Mississippi Delta. New Orleans is one of those cities that just cries to be photographed, like San Francisco and New York City and this book does a wonderful job of giving her her do. I recommend this book to anyone with an appreciation of great photography and one of a kind places.

Any one who has been to New Orleans will love this book. The pictures are large, full color and interesting in their persepctive. Even after almost 20 years, many of the landmarks are still easily identified. The cover is an aerial photo of Jackson Square in all its glory.

As a native of South Louisiana and a lifelong reader, I've grown particular about portrayals of our culture in fiction. So many writers, whether they come from the bayou or not, pander to the tourists to a very irritating degree (how many beignets on the banquette can you have in one book, anyway?). Kevin Scrantz gets it perfectly right, however, with just enough local color, often details you probably need to be a local to truly appreciate.
Much more important, though - the characters he creates are as finely drawn and memorable as anything you'd find in Dickens. His "Gleet" is pure genius.
But of course this would all be pointless without a compelling story, and Oyster Dancer is easily one of the most engaging novels I've read in years. People are going to be comparing this book to Confederacy of Dunces. While I agree that it is every bit as good as Toole's novel, it is completely original, and easily some of the best writing to come out of Louisiana in a generation. Now if only Mr. Scrantz would publish something else...

I am a very avid reader and I simply loved this book. The characters and the storyline are so colorful and vivid, I just couldn't put it down. I am from Louisiana, so I look forward to reading novels set here and am usually disappointed, but not this time! Great for the beach or a rainy day. I think anyone that enjoys reading will love this book and want to spread the word to all of their book-loving family and friends!

I am a kid again when I read Robert Skinner, which is why I truly recommend
Pale Shadow, the fifth novel in his crime series featuring Wesley Farrell of New
Orleans. I'm breathless and at the edge of my seat as a gunman "reached down
and jacked a cartridge into the breech of his .45. The metallic clash was like the
crack of doom in the dim room."

I am a longtime devotee of Wesley Farrell, a professional gambler, a nightclub
owner on Basin Street, and (by nature) an alley cat given to prowling the mean
streets of New Orleans. This time out, Farrell seeks to help out an old friend
Luiz Martinez whose mother is dying of lung cancer in El Paso.

Farrell and Martinez go back a long ways, back to Prohibition when both worked
with rum-runners. Martinez was "a Texan by birth, a mixture of Mexican, Indian
and Negro that they called mestizo in Old Mexico." Even then Farrell respected
Martinez: "He had the kind of brains that criminals rarely have, the kind that keep
you out of alive, out of jail, and with enough money to last beyond the next
week." Martinez is a guy whose ex-girlfriends shed tears when they remember
how good they used to have it together.

Farrell learned enough in his night work that he began smuggling liquor on his
own. In the dozen times since then that he had seen Martinez, his friend "had
had some kind of new racket, and had been doing well with it."

What Farrell doesn't know is Martinez has stolen a perfect set of counterfeit

plates and the bad guys are after his buddy. Martinez, on the other hand,
knows the score. Going to the cops meant time behind bars. Returning the
plates was an admission of defeat and submission to execution. "All that was
left was to make war."

The situation Farrell has stumbled into -- a band of counterfeiters out to kill the
renegade Martinez -- can leave Farrell and his buddy as roadkill. Farrell's fight
to save his friend is tooth and claw to the bittersweet end.

Farrell has to find his friend before the evildoers do. Dixie Ray Chavez, the
hired killer out to beat Farrell, tells his bosses, "Martinez has three friends in
New Orleans. I'm bettin' he'll go to one of `em for help, sooner or later." Who
gets there first gets to shoot first.

Chavez is one mean dude. He tortures one friend of Martinez "with a hot iron `til
her heart gave out." On another victim, "it looked as though skin had been
flayed from her." Dixie Ray Chavez is a tuning fork for other bad guys to home
in on. He "liked to think of himself as a bullet who stayed on course until the job
was done." Chavez plans to be there before Farrell and gone before the
Treasury agents stumble in.

Farrell and Pale Shadow are fun for all Farrell's secrets, the most important
being that he is Creole and passing for white in a racist society. His next best
secret is his close relationship with his father, Frank Casey, a red-headed Irish
cop ready to retire from the New Orleans Police department.

Skinner has written four previous Wesley Farrell novels and four nonfiction
books about the hard--boiled detective tradition. He is actually a well-respected
academic at Xavier University in New Orleans.

Pale Shadow takes place during September, 1940, in New Orleans, when the
Negro Detective Squad covered the crimes the white guys won't and backed off
the "white" cases. A time for riverboat gambling. A time when "a well-dressed
man with a slick line of jive" can go a long way.

The counterfeiters are pros: "The engraving technique is so good that the
Bureau of Engraving and Printing is jealous. And the paper is good enough to
fool ninety-seven percent of the people who touch it."

No all cops in Pale Shadow are good guys, either, which surprises no one who
knows New Orleans and its histories. "If there had existed in Detective Matty
Paret even a scintilla of honesty, he might have been an outstanding detective.
He was intelligent, thoughtful, and even possessed a certain shrewd insight into
the foibles of his fellow man. Had he liked money a little less and hard work
more, he'd have been a sergeant already."

I envelope myself in this mythical past of crooked cops, honest robbers and the
gray people who slide between them like a sharpened knife edge. I luxuriate in
the world I am too young to have ever been a party to, a world I most likely
would never have survived within, a world that helps me deal the real, everyday
villains on the front page and the cable headlines.

Wesley Farrell is a questionable hero in the same way that the 1930 and 1940
movies celebrated questionable heroes with actors like Humphrey Bogart, Dick
Powell, and Bob Mitchum. Skinner writes, "Farrell moved silently through the
crowd, his eyes glowing in that peculiar way from the shadow of his hat brim.
Occasionally somebody felt the feral quality emanating from him and stepped to
the side, hurriedly dragging a companion from Farrell's path." Locals whisper
his name when he passes.

Wes Farrell has that classic tenuous relationship with the cops, too. He has
some friends, but even his friends suspect there's much wisdom percolating
behind his mulatto features.

Yes, Wesley Farrell is biracial. So few writers are multicultural, and yet this
world grows more so every day. True cities like New Orleans have always been
multicultural -- although that phrase is still rings new to the city and the world --
and yet Farrell is not part of that 1940s racist past. In the real 1940s Farrell's
story would have been played out as another Example of the Tragic Mulatto, or
worse the Tragic Half-breed. (Think of Paul Newman playing Elmore Leonard's
Hombre; a man so marginalized, he isn't allowed a name until after he dies
saving all the whites.)

Farrell passes for white, and many call him "the great white hope, Wes Farrell,
who reaches down to help all the poor, helpless niggers in distress." Farrell
generally pulls off the masquerade, but not all the times. "Men never asked him
why he did the things he did. It was always the women who tried to understand,
who wanted an explanation for why he behaved in ways that were inexplicable in
a white man."

Skinner gives these denizens of New Orleans the wonderful names that 1940s
crime novels thrive upon: Wisteroa Mullins, Little Head Lucas, cheap thugs
named Tink and Rojo, Margaret "Jelly" Wilde, Marcel Aristide and Theron
Oswald.

I love this world where bodyguards and bouncers can be murdered silently in the
night, this frontier of hard-boiled and noir. Where cons talk of "dumb twists,"
cons mumble about `ofays," where only four aces always win.

A world that of course includes classic femme fatales: "She was tall, maybe
five-seven, with a lean, high-breasted figure and velvety skin the color of hark
honey." She has a devastating effect on men, too. Even men hard as rock get
goofy; "he had the insane urge to race around the room on all fours while he
barked the lyrics to `Jingle Bells.'"

These are dangerous women. One of Skinner's gloriously described femmes
owns and operates Sparrow's Joint, a most curious night club down along the
riverfront warehouses. "Her sallow skin and bold, handsome features were
those of a Jew or an Arab, Farrell had never known which." Sparrow tells
Farrell, "I'll simply tell you to be careful. The other side of the world is on fire

now, but evil energy is in the air even here."

Skinner doesn't over-furnish the 1940s. We get just enough to locate us in that
special time and place. A man might wear "a carefully trimmed mustache" and
"a stylish Wilton fedora tipped over his right ear." Another has a collarless shirt
and thick glasses made of window glass. A neon sign has the colorful shape of
"a top-hatted crawdish leaning negligently against a martini glass." Drinkers
toss down rye highballs in juke joints. Where men keep bottles of whiskey and
Colt .38 Supers in their suitcases.

Pale Shadow unfolds like a movie, and I love watching as "Farrell moved
through the noise and destruction like a hot wind, his rage and blood lust blotting
out all but the faceless shadow that retreated down toward the opposite end of
the building. His gun jumped in his hand until the hammer fell on an empty
chamber."

I love the town that Skinner loves. New Orleans is a border town between the
races. More complex than a love affair, and more shifting than standing on
quicksand. "The center of New Orleans was beating like a healthy heart, and
the death of a Negro woman in Gentilly meant little or nothing to the teeming life
of Rampart Street." Meanwhile, at the bordello, one can hear the bells at Holy
Ghost Catholic Church. We may want to visit Maxwell's Chicken Shack on
Derbigny Street or the Sassafrass Lounge for an matinee drink.

Pale Shadow is great fun. It's fun to watch how Skinner makes sure all the
interested parties keep abreast of exposition. Pale S

I'm surprised that more people haven't discovered Robert Skinner's Wesley Farrell series. Skinner's work is always well written, has interesting story lines, and has believable characters. However, unlike Skinner's previous novels in this series, our hero, Wesley Farrell isn't as prominately displayed this time around. Completely absent is his paramour, Savanna, a black club owner with a voice as rich as the delta. Rather, this time around Marcel Aristide, Wesley's cousin, makes a return appearence and steps to the forefront to follow in his sleuthing relative's footsteps.

It certainly wasn't unusual for a light-skinned black man to pass himself off as a white man in the New Orleans of the 1930's and 1940's. Farrell is such a man and cunningly dangerous to boot, but he doesn't disregard his black heritage or disrepect his white father, an Irishman and Chief of Detectives, Frank Casey. Most father's would regret having a son who has been an unconvicted career criminal, but Frank Casey's life has been saved and his career enhansed because his son knows the wrong side of the law as well as his father knows the right side.

Add to the complex story line the flavor of New Orleans, the taste of danger, a bit of intrigue, a wealth of racial mix and you have one of the most entertaining mysterys around. For other flavorful African American mysteries in New Orleans, try Barbara Hambly's Ben January series and James Sallis' Lew Griffin series.