Voodoo Dreams: A Novel of Marie Laveau

by Jewell Parker Rhodes

Paperback, 1995

Status

Available

Publication

Picador (1995), Edition: Reprint, 448 pages

Description

Spanning six decades of the 1800s, this mesmerizing story is a fictional biography of Marie Laveau--one of the most haunting characters in New Orleans' history. Part of a long line of voodoo priestesses and healers, Marie tells of the mystery, passion, and violence that pattern her life. Like her grandmother, Marie sees visions from an early age. She never knew her mother, who practiced a spiritualism so potent she was murdered by those who feared her. When Marie becomes a healer, she discovers a supernatural force that can channel the power of her ancestors. But it is a ferocious force driven by both life and death. Author Jewell Parker Rhodes has been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts and is a professor of American literature and creative writing at Arizona State University.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member LisaMaria_C
Marie Laveau was a powerful, legendary figure in 19th Century New Orleans--despite being a "woman of color" in that day and age in the South. A fascinating figure, but not a fascinating book, I think because Marie never comes into focus for me or feels convincing. This Marie is too passive, too
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much a victim whose fate is determined by others, and the story doesn't fit with what I know of Laveau, the daughter of a white planter and free Creole born in the French Quarter who married Jacques Paris at twenty-five--not sixteen. I think something in the style also put me off. The prose is often sensuous and the setting rendered vividly, but she bounces around perspectives, "head-hopping" and has way too much fondness for the rhetorical question. But I think that's rather minor compared to my feeling that the character Rhodes created bears no resemblance at all to a historical figure in what is supposed to be a biographical novel.
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Language

Original language

English

Physical description

448 p.; 5.5 inches

ISBN

0312119313 / 9780312119317

Local notes

fiction
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