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 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. ( )

I enjoyed this fictionalized biography a lot. It's about Marie Laveau, the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans. She's still considered a "folk hero" (I guess that's the right term) there, or at least she was last time I visited the city. A great book about her and her life. ( )

Very well written, made me what to know more about Maire and Voodoo. ( )