Estranged from her father and half-sister, Dove's only source of comfort
is her adopted mother, Rosa. When Rosa dies, Dove is forced to leave New
Orleans and return to Marionneaux, Louisiana--the town that Dove has
avoided since the murders of both her natural mother and grandmother.
Wasn't Dove thrilled when Amadeo Iantosca, her handsome boss at the Musée
D'Orleans offered to accompany her on her daunting journey? Wasn't Amadeo
eager to offer a shoulder and a hand? Wasn't Dove about to be caught in an
inhuman trap?
In Marionneaux, Dove reunites with her half-sister, Shelby, and Shelby's
fiancé, the abusive Averill Cage. As Dove finds herself entangled in the
powerful Cage family's deadly, demented games, she realizes that the key
to her salvation lies in the words of a long-dead woman--Columbia Navarre.
Columbia Navarre is alone.
1853 found the Navarre family fleeing the Marionneaux plantation of Manuel
Fontanals. As they headed toward freedom in New Orleans, they found
themselves gripped in the cruel, boiling fist of the Yellow Fever. The
Yellow Jack cared not for their freedom and by year's end, Columbia and
her grandmother, Marjani were all that remained of their family.
Marjani and Columbia celebrated their survival by dedicating themselves to
nursing those poor souls that had been stricken with the terrible plague.
However, in 1873, when Marjani succumbs to the fever, Columbia finds
herself on an unexpected quest for truth which leads her back to
Marionneaux. There, fair-skinned Columbia discovers that the townspeople
don't realize she's black. When wealthy Edolie Cage takes Columbia for a
white girl, Columbia feels she must tell the truth.
But, the Cages don't care much for truth--a trait Columbia notices in the
fox-like Orman Cage who desperately wants a new wife to help him raise his
infant daughter. Columbia takes comfort in her African friends who
introduce the staunch Catholic to a world of Voodoo. As Columbia becomes
torn between the gris-gris and the Lord Jesus, she finds herself caught in
the middle of Orman Cage's murderous war of lust and greed.
Guided by a prostitute known as "The Elegant Ogress," Columbia realizes that she must not only save herself but also pave a path toward freedom for the other young women that would become ensnared by the Cages of Marionneaux.
An epic work of literary fiction, The Cages of Marionneaux is a split-narrative spanning the late nineteenth to early twenty-first centuries. The novel studies the effect that one man's misguided actions can have over an entire population.
This is the second of a trilogy. The first novel, The Garnet Red, is currently available for publication. I expect to complete the third, The Elegant Ogress, by the end of Spring, 2005.
Joseph Crisalli
Read excerpts from the first book of The Cages of Marionneaux.
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