Publisher's Synopsis
From American master James Lee Burke comes a novel set in
Civil War-era Louisiana as the South transforms and a brilliant cast of
characters - enslaved and free women, plantation gentry, and battle-weary Confederate and Union soldiers - are caught in the maelstrom
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. Flags on
the Bayou is an engaging, action-packed narrative that includes a duel that
ends in disaster, a brutal encounter with the local Union commander, repeated
skirmishes with Confederate irregulars led by a diseased and probably deranged
colonel, and a powerful story of love blossoming between an unlikely pair. As
the story unfolds, it illuminates a past that reflects our present in sharp
relief. James Lee Burke, whose "evocative prose remains a thing of
reliably fierce wonder" (Entertainment Weekly), expertly renders the
rich Louisiana landscape, from the sunsets on the Mississippi River to the
dingy saloons of New Orleans to the tree-lined shores of the bayou and the
cottonmouth snakes that dwell in its depths. Powerful and deeply moving, Flags
on the Bayou is a story of tragic acts of war, class divisions upended,
and love enduring through it all.
