Voodoo Dreams: A Novel of Marie Laveau

New Orleans in the mid-nineteenth century is a city overflowing with white aristos, black creoles, and African Slaves, a city that pulses with crowds, with commerce and with the power and spectacle of the voodoo religion. At the center of the ritual is Marie Laveau, the notorious voodoiene, worshipped and feared by blacks and whites alike. Marie's followers claimed that she walked on water and sucked poison from a snake's jowls, that she raised the dead and murdered two men.

Voodoo Dreams is the spellbinding story of the woman behind the legend. Raised by her Grandmère in the Louisiana bayou, Marie ventures to New Orleans and begins a journey of self-discovery, hoping to find her lost Maman and understand the visions that haunt her dreams. Instead, she runs headlong into the brutality of slavery and oppression and into the arms of John, the voodoo doctor who promises to teach her what Grandmère will not. As she falls under his spell, John sweeps Marie into a world of voodoo ceremonies, of drama and manipulation, and of sometimes terrifying power. A mesmerizing combination of history and story telling, Voodoo Dreams was Jewell Parker Rhodes first novel and a B&N Discover Great New Writers selection.


Jewell is the author of six adult novels (Voodoo Dreams, Magic City, Douglass' Women, and the Marie Laveau mystery trilogy, Season, Moon, and Hurricane), two novels for children (Ninth Ward and Sugar) and several non-fiction books. Her work has won many awards, including the American Book Award, a Coretta Scott King Honor award, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. She is the founding director of the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University.