Description: In the fall of 1863, the Union army is in control of the Mississippi river. Much of Louisiana, including New Orleans and Baton Rouge, is occupied. The Confederate army is retreating toward Texas, and being replaced by Red Legs, irregulars commanded by a maniacal figure, and enslaved men and women are beginning to glimpse freedom. When Hannah Laveau, an enslaved woman working on the Lufkin plantation, is accused of murder, she goes on the run with Florence Milton, an abolitionist schoolteacher, dodging the local constable and the slavecatchers that prowl the bayous. Wade Lufkin, haunted by what he observed-and did-as a surgeon on the battlefield, has returned to his uncle's plantation to convalesce, where he becomes enraptured by Hannah.
Brief description: James Lee Burke is a New York Times bestselling author, two-time winner of the Edgar Award, and the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts in Fiction. He has authored forty novels and two short story collections. He lives in Missoula, Montana.
Review Quotes: "After award-winning author James Lee Burke delivers his introduction, a series of introspective monologues is brought vividly to life in six stellar performances. The setting is Louisiana during the late days of the Civil War. MacLeod Andrews, Michael Crouch, Dana Gourrier, Marin Ireland, January LaVoy, and Ray Porter portray all manner of humanity, including a ragtag collection of Union and Rebel soldiers, slave owners and slave catchers, free and enslaved women, and a deranged colonel and his band of marauding Confederate killers. The narrators deliver deeply felt first-person stories that neatly intertwine, and Burke delivers the epilogue. The unique narrations and Burke's poetry weave a dreamscape of beauty, love, hatred, and horror--a reminder of the disastrous results that once arose in a divided nation."-- "Winner of an AudioFile Earphones Award, AudioFile Magazine"