Lasting Impressions
The über hot ticket in Washington, D.C. this summer is the Edgar Degas/Mary Cassatt exhibit at the National Gallery of Art. One surprising revelation is that both artists loathed being labeled “Impressionists” (they preferred “independents”), but no mention is made of the abruptness with which Degas threw himself into this radical style or that his decision was made thousands of miles from his native France. Degas’s mother, Celestine Musson, was a Louisiana Creole who died when he was thirteen, and in 1872, at age 38, he visited her brother Michel and his daughters, Estelle, Mathilde and Désirée in New Orleans. Seduced by the exotic city, he wrote glowing letters home about his enchantment. “Everything attracts me here…the white houses with columns of fluted wood...
Read MoreRequiem for a Queen
They said she sinned by ambition and was doomed from the outset, tethered to a world facing apocalypse. She listened to nothing save the siren song of destiny, a stone-and-iron fantasy that became the jewel in the crown of Louisiana plantation houses. No one had seen her likes before, nor would they see them again. She was Belle Grove, the fabulous queen of sugar king John Andrews, and she was born of a genteel rivalry to build bigger and better than anyone in the antebellum South. Her competitor, Nottaway (see Game of Thrones), was the work of John Hamden Randolph, another incredibly rich planter a short distance upriver. From sheer size alone, there was never any doubt that Belle Grove would take the sweepstakes as Andrews erected a palace to please a pharaoh....
Read MoreGame of Thrones
My favorite perk of writing historical fiction is exploring sites for my plots and characters. More often than not, the search leads to serendipitous flights of fancy that are great fun despite having nothing to do with the book. For example, when I started researching Creole Son about painter Edgar Degas’s visit to New Orleans, I needed a scene at a sugar plantation to introduce his inventor cousin Norbert Rillieux whose invention for refining sugar revolutionized the industry. The Millaudon plantation Degas actually visited was no longer standing, but since I lived in the French Quarter there were others nearby to provide the ambience I needed to write the scene. Lots of old homes line the Great River Road paralleling the Mississippi, and after some homework I...
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