Lyle Saxon

In these classic, fascinating, and often terrifying tales--Mardi Gras Indians, Baby Dolls, the Zulu King, Loup Garou, and the headless horseman of Natchitoches--all share the stage. Ghost stories from around Louisiana mingle with the true horrors of figures such as the infamous New Orleans Axeman. Learn stories of the Creoles and Cajuns, Southern church traditions, Voodoo rituals, hexes, and charms. Gumbo Ya-Ya, everybody talks at once, expresses the tension between refinement and profanity, the sacred and the sensual--which defines Louisiana culture to this day. This 70th Anniversary Pelican Publishing unabridged edition's contents are wholly true to the 1945 original edition. First commissioned as a project of the Works Progress Administration Louisiana Writers' Program, it has stood the test of time and is a book beloved by historians, locals, and visitors.

Second-place winner of the 2019 IndieReader Discovery Award for Fiction First published 1919-1923 in the New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper, the thirty-nine tales that comprise this volume include short stories, preservationist essays and character sketches of the author's beloved city. Most of the works in this book have been out of print since they were originally published. In this rediscovered collection of Lyle Saxon's early short stories and character sketches, readers will take great pleasure in seeing in print for the first time in nearly a century some of the author's early classics such as The Last Reunion and Who Would Hunt for Spanish Doubloons and Pieces of Eight? Also among the stories in this volume are metaphorical visions of Saxon's childhood, when Saxon was abandoned by his father and raised by his mother and grandparents. He draws other stories from contemporary headlines or images of antebellum gentility. In each, Saxon pays special attention to the odd quirks expressed by that most-honored of New Orleans species, the French Quarter character.

Saxons irreverent autobiography masquerades as the story of his faithful friend Joe.

An anthology of some of the best short stories ever written by Louisiana authors. Included in this compilation are works by Henry Clay Lewis, George Washington Cable, Lafcadio Hearn, Grace King, Kate Chopin, William Faulkner, Lyle Saxon, E. P. O'Donnell, Shirley Ann Grau, Ernest Gaines, Andre Dubus, James Lee Burke, and John William Corrington.