In 1941, twenty-three-year-old Helen Bynum leaves home for the first time and sets out from rural New York to find her Aunt Lulu, an aging actress in New Orleans. There she finds a life of passion and adventure, possibilities and choices. Falling in with a bohemian group of intellectuals, she discovers romance and sex, friendship and risk, her world mirrored by the steamy mystery of the French Quarter.
Paula Fox (1923—2017) was the author of Desperate Characters, The Widow’s Children, A Servant’s Tale, The God of Nightmares, Poor George, The Western Coast, and Borrowed Finery: A Memoir, among other books.
Rosellen Brown is the author of the best-selling novel Before and After as well as Half a Heart, Civil Wars, and others. She lives in Chicago.