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Elysian Fields
Mark LaFlaur, author
Adult; General Fiction (including literary and historical); (Market)
New Orleans, 1999. Simpson Weems is a 36-year-old aspiring poet whose life has been on hold—to the breaking point. All he needs to fulfill his potential is to move to San Francisco, but he’s torn between his long-held dream of being a great artist and obligations to his ailing mother and his emotionally volatile brother, the all-demanding Bartholomew. Will someone in his family have to die before he can get to California? And how might that be arranged?
Written “on location” in New Orleans and set shortly before Hurricane Katrina, Elysian Fields has been likened to works by Tennessee Williams, Walker Percy, Robert Penn Warren, and Rabelais. It combines the comic strangeness of Flannery O’Connor and hints of magical realism to portray highly individualized characters and a Crescent City that is both recognizable and more offbeat and seductive than visitors usually see, from Bourbon Bath, a water-pleasure house in the Vieux Carré (“Warm Baths with Hot, Slippery Wet-Dream Girls!”) to a fantastical Carnival interlude in a subterranean tavern deep beneath the French Quarter.
Praise for Elysian Fields
“Engrossing . . . Readers will find the author’s portrayal of New Orleans convincing and his characters fascinating and fully developed.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Compelling and mesmerizing . . . Elysian Fields is real literature coming out of a real place.” —Christine Wiltz, bestselling author of The Last Madam
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