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| Voodoo Season: A Marie Laveau Mystery | 
 enlarge | Author: Jewell Parker Rhodes
Publisher: Atria
Category: Book
List Price: $24.00
Buy Used: $1.61
You Save: $22.39 (93%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 847431
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.2
ISBN: 0743483278
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780743483278
ASIN: 0743483278
Publication Date: August 30, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Normal used cover and page wear. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed.
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Product Description
Voodoo Season revisits the mystical landscape of New Orleans -- and its most famous Voodoo priestess, Marie Laveau -- that Jewell Parker Rhodes introduced us to in her previous novel Voodoo Dreams. This time, the award-winning author of historical fiction sets the story in the here and now.Meet Marie Levant. The great-great granddaughter of the beloved, tantalizing Marie Laveau, she is compelled by unseen forces to leave her medical career in Chicago behind and return to her roots. But once she arrives in New Orleans, Marie is both seduced and horrified by this mysterious landscape whose slave-holding past merges with the spoils of the twenty-first century. A place where the Quadroon Balls of yesterday are a present reality, and women of color are still being abused and -- even more horrifying -- rendered "undead." Yet through it all, Marie can't help but sense that she's lived here before . . . and that maybe there's more to this city's history -- and her own. With Voodoo Season, Rhodes once again presents her legions of fans with a heroine of authentic power and an alluring, unforgettable read.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 5 more reviews...
Spiritual Awakening... August 22, 2005
13 out of 13 found this review helpful
There is a legend that the infamous New Orleans native and Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau never died, that, in fact, her spirit lives on in selected female descendents, each a namesake, and Laveau's faithful are awaiting her return. Jewell Parker Rhodes (Voodoo Dreams, Douglass's Women, Magic City) births a modern day Marie in the second book of the Marie Laveau/Voodoo trilogy, Voodoo Season: a Marie Laveau Mystery.
The novel centers on first year medical resident, Marie Levant, a cum laude graduate from the school of hard knocks. As a child living in Chicago, she discovered her mother's lifeless body on the kitchen floor and was whisked away only to be abused in the foster care system. She defies the odds by excelling academically and winning scholarships to medical school, which she views as a natural progression to her inherent life-long healing abilities. She is an animal lover, empathetic to her patients, and acts rather impulsively on her rather sensuous nature. The novel opens with her relocating to New Orleans, after being drawn there by unknown forces. She battles disturbing dreams that contain vivid images of ritual ceremonies, childbirth, and a woman being persecuted. The tale is largely told from Levant's perspective and uses flashbacks/memories to show her immediate past as a forlorn child and haunting dreams to reveal her spiritual past as Laveau, the Voodoo Queen. As you can guess, Levant is the chosen one, and it seems everyone knows it but her.
Rhodes sprinkles elements of suspense and foreboding in lines such as, "Summer. Sin season. Fever season. Anything could happen. Even the undead," and emphasizes Levant's confusion and struggles as she comes into her "season" or her reckoning with her destiny. She initially rejects her increasing power of healing, insight and intuition and balks at the awareness of herself as a Marie Laveau reincarnate; a powerful Voodooienne. However, along the way, she begrudgingly embraces her fate as she discovers painful family secrets and the truth behind her mother's death and its eerie similarity with the murders of the young, unclaimed girls who keep showing up in her wake.
Although not a strong mystery (more so filled with anticipation), the book does a wonderful job clarifying and dispelling misconceptions about the Vodun religion and the origin of Voodoo as the merging of African beliefs and Christianity. One character explains, "Religions from the African Diaspora all value the snake as knowledge, all-knowing, an infinity and fertility symbol. White Christians bemoan that a snake tempted Eve in the Garden. But in voodoo, the same myth is a cause for celebration. Snakes represent knowledge. `Knowing is what keeps you safe, strong.' What good is Eden with ignorance?" Going a step further, she parallels spiritual icons. In one example, Legba is akin to St. Peter and serves as a gatekeeper.
Rhodes masterfully blends in the historical decadence of the New Orleans of old - the true purpose of the Quadroon Balls with hints of the La Placage lifestyle, lessons on racism/colorism (New Orleans style), complete with beguiling glimpses into another world complete with ghosts, zombies, spirit gods, and ritual sacrifices.
Reviewed by Phyllis
APOOO BookClub
Nubian Circle Book Club
Good - But Little Off February 19, 2007
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
I liked the book, along with Voodoo Dreams, but if your going to write about Louisiana, you have to make sure to get the little things right. In the book she says "Crayfish", but no one in southern Louisiana would say that, instead they are called "Crawfish", only tourists call them crayfish. And Marie hears "Crocodiles", but what she should have heard were "Alligators". Shows some lack of reasearch about the place she is writing about.
 fast-paced exciting supernatural mystery August 26, 2005
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Marie Levant relocates from Chicago to begin a medial residency at the New Orleans' Charity Hospital. However, upon returning to the hometown of her ancestors, Marie begins to have strange violent dreams about her heritage. That is followed by ritual serial killings that force Marie to look into her past as the direct descendent of Voodoo Priestess Marie Laveau and two subsequent Maries who were bathed in blood.
Marie learns that young females are being abducted to serve as prostitutes at reenactment galas of nineteenth century quadroon balls; the unfortunate innocents are used and abused before being converted into slave zombies. New Orleans Police Detective Reneaux struggles to save the girls and uncover the monster behind this hideous practice, but only Marie by claiming her heritage can hope to stop the evil that engulfs the young of the city.
VOODOO SEASON is a terrific paranormal police procedural that will make believers of readers that there are strange unexplained essences and inexplicable powers out there. The story line is action-packed as Marie slowly accepts her ancestry "gifts" while Reneaux struggles with a nasty case and how Marie fits in the middle of the maelstrom. Fans of fast-paced exciting supernatural mysteries will want to read this jewel of a thriller.
Harriet Klausner
 Stink, Stank, Stunk! January 31, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
The author has been watching too much of the Blues Brothers movie where they go to Louisiana to compete in a band competition and meet the "Voodoo Queen". The conversations between the characters are choppy and unreadable. The story line in the hospital in ridiculous, with the hospital administrator being a drunk, the nurses being loony and the ONE police figure being unstrung. The ending is so comical, Blues Brother funny and unbelievable that you aren't surprised when she just ....STOPS the book with no plausible ending, leaving all characters, including the dog - just hanging. Please lady --- come back to the real world. If this is what the creole culture in New Orleans is really about it's a good thing they are rebuilding. Look elsewhere to spend $15.00.
 Couldn't follow the author March 22, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I have read different fictional books on the topic of Voodoo and thought this one was going to be especially good as one of my favorite authors, Tananarive Due, gave a review on it. I was disappointed however. I think throughout the book the author might assume you are following right with her but I was lost and felt she was leaving information out. I was drawn in for maybe the first half but then she lost me. Overall I think the story had potential but it's unlikely I'll read this author again.
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