<b>From American master James Lee Burke comes a novel set in<br>Civil War-era Louisiana as the South transforms and a brilliant cast of<br>characters - enslaved and free women, plantation gentry, and battle-weary Confederate and Union soldiers - are caught in the maelstrom</b></p><b> </b>In the fall of 1863, the Union army is in control of the<br>Mississippi river. Much of Louisiana, including New Orleans and Baton Rouge, is<br>occupied. The Confederate army is retreating toward Texas, and being<br>replaced by Red Legs, irregulars commanded by a maniacal figure, and enslaved<br>men and women are beginning to glimpse freedom.</p></p></p> When Hannah Laveau, an enslaved woman working on the<br>Lufkin plantation, is accused of murder, she goes on the run with Florence<br>Milton, an abolitionist schoolteacher, dodging the local constable and the<br>slavecatchers that prowl the bayous. Wade Lufkin, haunted by what he<br>observed--and did--as a surgeon on the battlefield, has returned to his uncle's<br>plantation to convalesce, where he becomes enraptured by Hannah. <i>Flags on<br>the Bayou </i>is an engaging, action-packed narrative that includes a duel that<br>ends in disaster, a brutal encounter with the local Union commander, repeated<br>skirmishes with Confederate irregulars led by a diseased and probably deranged<br>colonel, and a powerful story of love blossoming between an unlikely pair. As<br>the story unfolds, it illuminates a past that reflects our present in sharp<br>relief.</p> James Lee Burke, whose "evocative prose remains a thing of<br>reliably fierce wonder" (<i>Entertainment Weekly</i>), expertly renders the<br>rich Louisiana landscape, from the sunsets on the Mississippi River to the<br>dingy saloons of New Orleans to the tree-lined shores of the bayou and the<br>cottonmouth snakes that dwell in its depths. Powerful and deeply moving, <i>Flags<br>on the Bayou </i>is a story of tragic acts of war, class divisions upended, <br>and love enduring through it all.</p>