Read any Benjamin January mysteries by Barbara Hamby?

[raccoon]

I've started SOLD DOWN THE RIVER. Good historical info but don't know if I want to read about slavery days right now.

BTW, a book that really showed the horror of slavery was KINDRED by Octavia Butler.

[raccoon]

1. Correction, the author's name is Hambly. nt

[Hayabusa]

2. The only book I read by her

caused me to swear off any other book by her, even her other Star Wars novel.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

3. I enjoy her Benjamin January series

It's a fascinating picture of life in pre-Civil War New Orleans, which had a different culture from much of the rest of the South, due to its French and Spanish heritage.

Start with the first book, A Free Man of Color, which introduces Benjamin January, born into slavery but freed when his mother was bought as a mistress by a wealthy white man and eventually freed. His mother's patron pays for his education and even sends him to France. He returns from France with medical training, which he can't use officially, so he earns his living as a musician. He has an older sister, Olympe, who has rejected the white world and is a voodoo priestess. His half-sister Dominique, daughter of his mother's patron, is herself being kept by a white man. The complex racial and sexual politics of the era make an intriguing background for a mystery series.