Published by Blue Light Books at Indiana University Press.
ISBN 978-0-253-02670-5 Due Out March 2017
Paperback: $12.00
The intertwined stories in What My Last Man Did bring us characters from a glorious mix of backgrounds, races, cultures, and historic eras. In 1895 the maestro of the New Orleans Opera House falls in love with a young courtesan. In Slaughter, Louisiana, 1917, a sheriff becomes obsessed with a teen-aged blues singer. In 1946 an American GI meets a pregnant Japanese widow from the Manzanar internment camp. On Galveston Island in 1975 a brilliant and reclusive young woman goes on a hunger strike to protect two pelican eggs from developers. At the center of it all, Louis Paradiso––smart, soft-hearted, orphaned at fourteen––wends his way through the book, connecting the characters, families and generations to one another. The people in these ten vivid stories all come to face tragedy and real-world catastrophic events––war, hurricanes, the Great Depression, prejudice and race laws––in their pursuit of love, family, and belonging.
