In New Orleans following Katrina all bets are of; all masks dissolved. “Don’t forget the sham in shaman,” Jacob Laguerre lies to his new apprentice, Alex Hampton. When Alex, a twenty-eight year-old anthropology professor goes on field-study to post-Katrina New Orleans, he enters a chaotic and altered landscape where he’s psychologically, physically and spiritually challenged by the sarcastic mentoring of the mulatto, Laguerre, a current day voudoo shaman. Laguerre, who in his criminal past implemented chaos and escape, confronts his own internal demons as he toys with and tutors Alex. Laquerre leads a quirky group, as colorful and eccentric as the city itself, as they follow a taut path between madness and redemption in the no man’s land of Refrigerator Town. These fringe dwellers :Lily Hampton, a sculptor, torn between her love for both men; Mavis, an artist who spent nights in her attic, but survived the floods; Perry Laguerre, Jacob’s hermaphroditic twin, and Bad Jacqui, lesbian owner of a French Quarter bar all form together as they assist in the aftermath and healing of both New Orleans and those who remain. Here in this unpredictable landscape they discover how art, existentialism, creativity, atonement, the Lower Ninth Ward, FEMA, New Orleans politics, music, flood, voodoo, fire, Haitian history, mythology, alchemy, government apathy, human suffering… and ultimately transformation and sanctuary.
advertisement