Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #280337 in Books
• Published on: 1995-01-15
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

From Publishers Weekly
NEA Fiction Award winner Rhodes's first novel brings to life a legendary 19th-century voodoo priestess.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
In this first novel, which is based on the life of a 19th-century voodooist, Rhodes attempts to place her subject within a feminist context. Brought to New Orleans from the bayou by her grandmother, a former slave, the fictional Marie is persuaded to marry Jacques, a black sailor, in order to escape her mother's fate. Marie's mother was a voodoo queen who was killed because white people feared her powers. Marie leaves Jacques and falls under the spell of John, a voodoo doctor who beats her and exploits her ability to influence crowds. When Marie recognizes and accepts her powerful voodoo heritage, she is able to free herself from John. While Rhodes effectively captures the erotic and racist climate of 19th-century New Orleans, her plot is overwritten and occasionally repetitive.
- Harriet Gottfried, NYPL
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
A gripping first novel that limns the life of African-American Marie Laveau, the legendary Voodoo Queen of New Orleans, with all the brooding intensity and latent menace of a summer's night on a lonely bayou. Assembling scattered references to Laveau in Creole folklore, Rhodes not only tells a riveting story but creates a panoramic portrait of New Orleans life in the early 1800's. Like a Dickensian London, the city where Marie confronts her destiny is a vibrant place teeming with Creoles, slaves, free blacks, aristo descendants of the French and Spanish settlers, and Yankees. Marie is a direct descendant of Membe, who, instructed by Damballah, the great snake god, became a slave so that she could mother the god's lost children in America. As Marie lies dying, an old woman revered for her good deeds, she tells her story to lifelong admirer Louis Delavier. Beginning in the middle--since ``the middle is the beginning of everything. Everything spirals from the center. Lies, pain, and loss haunt the future as well as the past''--she describes how she deliberately let her python, with whom she shared the spirit of Damballah, murder John--her Svengali, her nemesis. She then goes on to recall the happiest years of her life--her childhood with grandmother Marie in rural Tech,, where on her tenth birthday she not only saw visions but had a frightening encounter with a man who ``smelled of ash and withered leaves.'' The man is John, who, sold into slavery, is interested in voodoo only for his own ends. He later seduces young Marie, exploits her visionary gifts, and ruthlessly destroys all those who thwart him. Marie's murder of John alienates her from her daughter, but--reconciling her Catholic upbringing with voodoo, an affirmative power when properly handled--she becomes a noted healer. All the ingredients of a bewitching read--atmosphere, adventure, mystery, and romance--as well as enough intellectual substance to give it a satisfying heft. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

"Marie could be extraordinarily and ordinarily human."


Marie Laveau is perhaps one of the most recognizable figures in the lore of voodoo in New Orleans. Plying these exotic arts over her long life, the Voodoo Queen sparks fear, reverence and curiosity, her embrace of the dark arts irresistible in the 19th century. A combination of questionable beliefs, blood sacrifice and sexuality give voice to her public's insatiable demands, the darkly thrilling and the profane acted out in ceremonies that invite the presence of Damballa, Marie entwined with the serpent, writhing to the rhythmic drumbeat and the awe of worshippers. New Orleans is the perfect venue, that great melting pot of black, white and all shades- and social classes- in between. In Parker Rhodes' depiction, Marie is isolated throughout childhood, the daughter and granddaughter of skilled voodooiennes. Her mother killed by a hysterical crowd in front of a cathedral, it is Marie's grandmother who raises the girl deep in the Teche bayou.

Formerly a practitioner of voodoo herself, Grandmere has given up old beliefs for the comfort of her Catholic faith. Her questions ignored, Marie senses her grandmother's moral ambivalence and deep-seated fear of eternal damnation. Driven to learn of her mother's fate, Marie eventually abandons her closest kin for those who would teach her the truth, unable to forgive an old woman's lifetime of regrets. Married to Jacques Paris for the sake of fulfilling her destiny, Marie leaves Jacques for a seemingly ageless John, his cheeks marked with the tribal scars of royalty, a man who seduces and disdains, replacing her mother- whom he loved- with the daughter, seeking the power and wealth that can only be his by association: "Women hand sight down through the generations. Mother to daughter." In her hopeless passion for the cruel, demanding John, Marie intuits that her only chance is in wresting freedom from him, claiming that power for herself, the Voodoo Queen: "If she were good, she's stop wanting a man so evil."

Marie's evolution from childhood to the birth of her daughter is the crux of the novel, a mélange of fantasy with reality, diverse characters, white and black, in a lush setting of moral decadence and mindless belief, the shifting landscape of Laveau's life both innocent and dispassionate, urging escape through the enactment of religious ceremonies endemic to the region. Marie is a symbol for the powerless, belief in her an opportunity to rise above the plight of the slave, a challenge to the white man's repression, awakening the fear of the slave master. Cloaked in the myth of voodoo, Marie drifts between ecstasy and terror, a pawn to a violent and jealous man. Gradually resisting his domination, Marie faces her own demon: fear. Skillfully melding myth and historical fact, the author creates a heady brew that reeks of danger, mystery and the forbidden. Whether in fugue state or despair, the young Marie has not yet become the legendary figure of later years, embracing her destiny in a chaotic century where poverty and disease feed on superstition, rising like a phoenix from the ashes of slavery, wielding her magic, offering hope to the hopeless. Luan Gaines/ 2008.

Please Read It!
This book was wonderful. From the very moment I picked it up, I was hooked. As soon as I finished, I flipped from the last page to the first page and started it again. I didn't want the story to end. I have never enjoyed reading a book more than I did this. Please read it. I recommend it to anyone that can read!

A Treasure!
It was only by chance that I found this book. I was looking at the local library and there it was. I snatched it up and took it home right away. The story is filled with amazing descriptives and a style of writing that truly reflects the story. This book, though fiction, sheds wonderful light on the person Marie Laveau instead of just the Voodoo Icon. I can't wait to read the author's second novel.