The Feast of All Saints

In the days before the Civil War in the old French Quarter of New Orleans there lived the gens de couleur libre, the Free People of Color, a fierce and proud people, descended from slaves and their French and Spanish owners, neither black nor white, but caught between the two - free and yet not free. Among them is Marcel, the mesmeric copper- skinned youth, mercurial, attractive, wild: an artist in the making, he dreams of Paris, and the lure of a brand new art, Daguerrotype. His gentle sister Marie longs for love and marriage in a world ready to sell her charms to the highest bidder. And there is Anna Bella, the beautiful young courtesan; and Dolly Rose, the splendid madame; and Christophe, the brilliant young teacher who has returned from Paris with dangerous ideas.