Flags on the Bayou

From American master James Lee Burke comes a novel set inCivil War-era Louisiana as the South transforms and a brilliant cast ofcharacters – enslaved and free women, plantation gentry, and battle-weary Confederate and Union soldiers – are caught in the maelstrom

 In the fall of 1863, the Union army is in control of theMississippi river. Much of Louisiana, including New Orleans and Baton Rouge, isoccupied. The Confederate army is retreating toward Texas, and beingreplaced by Red Legs, irregulars commanded by a maniacal figure, and enslavedmen and women are beginning to glimpse freedom.

 When Hannah Laveau, an enslaved woman working on theLufkin plantation, is accused of murder, she goes on the run with FlorenceMilton, an abolitionist schoolteacher, dodging the local constable and theslavecatchers that prowl the bayous. Wade Lufkin, haunted by what heobserved—and did—as a surgeon on the battlefield, has returned to his uncle’splantation to convalesce, where he becomes enraptured by Hannah. Flags onthe Bayou is an engaging, action-packed narrative that includes a duel thatends in disaster, a brutal encounter with the local Union commander, repeatedskirmishes with Confederate irregulars led by a diseased and probably derangedcolonel, and a powerful story of love blossoming between an unlikely pair. Asthe story unfolds, it illuminates a past that reflects our present in sharprelief.

 James Lee Burke, whose “evocative prose remains a thing ofreliably fierce wonder” (Entertainment Weekly), expertly renders therich Louisiana landscape, from the sunsets on the Mississippi River to thedingy saloons of New Orleans to the tree-lined shores of the bayou and thecottonmouth snakes that dwell in its depths. Powerful and deeply moving, Flagson the Bayou is a story of tragic acts of war, class divisions upended,and love enduring through it all.