SEASON OF FRIENDS

Vickie and Anne on porch

This summer has been a season of friends, traveling afar to be with them and staying at home to receive them, and the latest visitor was a long-term friend from New Iberia, Louisiana. Yesterday, Anne Simon, author of mysteries called “The Blood Series” — Blood in the Cane Field, Blood in the Lake, and Blood of Believers — sat a spell with us on the small porch facing our woods here in Sewanee, Tennessee. Presently, Anne, a retired district judge, has turned her attention from writing mysteries to telling the story of an African-American woman named Felicité who nursed yellow fever victims in New Iberia during the 19th century, and we enjoyed a good writers’ chat concerning the extensive research she has been doing regarding Felicité.

We sat on the porch “taking the air,” as we say in south Louisiana, and I was reminded of the essay I wrote for Porch Posts (co-authored with Janet Faulk-Gonzales) a few years ago. This morning, I re-read my last essay in this book entitled “The Ultimate Porch:” 

“It [the porch] would be a place to which people brought peace and conversation, laughter, and their willingness to take time out. For me, the ultimate porch would also be a dual haven, in early morning hours offering me a safe place where I could sit in silence, stilling the storm of some past suffering in my mind, or expressing myself in writing, all my senses effortlessly taking in the scene around me, interrupted only by the squawk of a crow bringing me messages of affirmation.

Mostly, I’d want to bring to it my “belonging”… with friends, family, and community… where, as C.S. Lewis said, we all saw the same truth: love. Evening would be the best time for porch sitting, a time like that of an old memory at early dusk when there was just enough light to read by, and my Grandmother Nell and I sat together in a scaling, green-painted swing, reading from Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verse: “The world is so full of a number of things,/I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.”

In early September, we plan to venture over to LaGrange, Georgia to sit on the new porch of our friend, Mary Ann Wilson, who probably loves porches as much as I do and was laying the foundation for one when we first visited her in June. It’s a screened one overlooking a patch of Georgia woods “in the country,” she says, “a place I’ve never lived.” Every time she writes, she’s on that porch, enjoying a deserved retirement from the English Department at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, her “roofed-in observation post where she can sit to get a clear view of what’s in the world outside and that allows for amiable company…”*

Moon in a Bucket

*Introduction to Porch Posts by Diane Marquart Moore and Janet-Faulk Gonzales. Illustration by Paul Schexnayder in Porch Posts.

ANNE SIMON'S LATEST: BLOOD OF THE BELIEVERS

A few years ago, when The Honorable Anne Simon decided to write police procedural novels, a series of books with "Blood" in the titles, she launched a career revealing her talent as a writer that equaled her success in the field of law. In this month's publication of the third novel in her series, Blood of the Believers, she continues to showcase her talents as a writer based on her experiences in the legal field. She delivers a rich, well-plotted novel that holds the reader in suspense with two homicide investigations which take place in Acadiana, her adopted home.

Simon explores her adopted home territory using excellent insight and a highly literate style to achieve an authoritative crime novel. Her descriptions of Acadiana resonate with her love of the area that has been her home for over fifty years. A sample of her ability to describe Acadiana in a setting that affects an excellent "lift-off" is featured in the "Prologue" to Blood of the Believers:

"Shaded by a canopy of drooping willow trees, a flat-bottomed bateau plied the shoreline of a narrow bayou leading from the south end of Catahoula Lake. The prow of the wooden boat poked in and out of stands of cypress knees protruding from dark sludge at the water's edge. Sitting on a plank in the stern of the bateau, an old man nudged the tiller to the port and starboard, his gnarled and sun-browned hand controlling their course. An outboard motor purred behind him..."

The story opens when Homicide Detective Ted D'Aquin's ten-year-old son Andre discovers a body while crabbing in Catahoula Lake with his grandfather and proceeds through several homicide investigations, including the murder of a prominent local citizen's eccentric wife who collects dolls

"in varying stages of construction [covering] the surface. Cloth bodies, china heads, and bins of sewing supplies — material, ribbons, and buttons — spilled from the shelves of china cabinets along the walls. The second doll room showed off the finished products, groupings of the most elaborately dressed examples of the collection. Probably fifty little ladies in satin dresses had at hand their imagined needs: miniature tables, chairs, utensils, carriages for their babies..." 

At the latter scene, another body of an unidentified black male is discovered, and Simon is off and running, involving the reader in two investigations by Ted D'Aquin and his partner Lorraine LaSalle, with the assistance of District Attorney Dennis Byrne. The novel features a complex plot involving the two criminal cases; in addition, an ongoing search for D'AQuin's wife, a probation officer who disappears while making a routine visit in the field, provides an intriguing side story. Simon is convincing in her ability to achieve a unified story with the cases at hand, including a surprise finale.

When I read Blood of the Believers, I was mesmerized by Simon's well-paced prose and her facility to create the tension that identifies a superb crime novel — I thought of Ruth Rendell and P.D. James, who have given readers first-rate novels that move us through suspense-filled yarns rich with allusion and clever plots. Simon's familiarity with police procedure and the courtroom serve her well in creating the kind of high excitement Rendell and James achieved in their crime novels.

As another adopted daughter of Acadiana, I appreciate Simon's colorful descriptions of the bayou country that equal her predecessor, James Lee Burke — also, her deft touch in creating unusual personalities and locales of Acadiana; e.g., Brother Noah Norbert of the "Church of the Blessed Believers," one of the characters who enhances the intricate plot.

"At the front of the room, a tall white man wearing an electric blue robe with a white cross emblazoned on the front stood on an elevated platform behind a podium. Like the statue of Christ above Rio, he held his arms spread wide...Stage right, a dozen men and woman with a range of skin tones swayed in a syncopated rhythm as they hummed a dirge....a ten-foot-square banner on the wall behind the podium proclaimed 'Let the Believers Testify to His Glory'..."

Because of the numerous characters who move in and out of this tense novel, a List of Characters is included in the preliminary pages of Blood of the Believers, and several maps assist readers in identifying crime scenes. The arresting cover art was done by New Iberia artist, Nan M. Landry.

Hopefully, this brief review will titillate followers of Simon's "Blood Series" to read the latest compelling novel in which Simon is at her suspenseful best. An absorbing and well-written read by an author who has an unusual way of looking at cases, but respects authenticity. Spellbinding storytelling.

Anne L. Simon was born in the East, educated at Wellesley, Yale and Louisiana State University Law Schools, practiced law with her husband Jerry, raised a family, and became the first female judge in the area. Now retired, she travels, enjoys family near and far, takes long walks with her dog, Petey, and writes.

Published by Border Press Books, P.O. Box 3124, Sewanee, TN 37375 and at Amazon.com.

IN A CONVENT GARDEN

For those readers who responded so enthusiastically to my last blog about Penny, the dog who aspires to the diaconate, I’ve included a poem about her in my newest collection of poetry entitled In a Convent Garden and Other Poems, which will be published in a few weeks. The volume is a product of this summer’s writing, and rather than review my own work, I’m including the acknowledgements of fellow authors in this blog for those who read the poetry I write while I’m sojourning on The Mountain here at Sewanee, Tennessee. The acknowledgements are humbling and affirming, and I’m happy to share the endorsements of gifted writers and discerning readers:

“I do not profess to know the mind of the talented Diane Marquart Moore but I do know something of its grasp of the essential, in things both ordinary and extraordinary, from the poems collected in In a Convent Garden and Other Poems. Moore is an intuitive, fiercely intelligent, and contemplative poet who renders each poem with a precision of language that makes her ideas of the metaphysical palpable and clear. Her poems, propelled by still, but spirited narration, captivate. We are taken many places: the convent garden, a fortress on the bluff, No Name Road, the plains of Khuzestan—each place absorbed by Moore through all of her senses then conveyed in sharp but measured detail to her readers, for the purpose of leading us to higher ground. This life, seen by Moore, is never spare or hopeless, which is the true gift of this book. In fact the whole book is an urging to hope. She does not spare us the truth of the ‘marrow of bondage’ all of humanity shares, but her poems promise freedom. Moore assuredly directs us to an ineffable Source. Grace surmounts the suffering of this world, and we are led into a revelation of holy shimmer that drizzles on dogs and cats, stone angels, and gratefully on us.”

—Clare L. Martin, poet and author of Eating the Heart First, Press 53, 2012.

"Time out to reveal the heart"—such is the work Diane Marquart Moore has made for herself as a poet. Remembering to breathe inside the lines, remembering to delight in the gifts of the spirit, she turns In a Convent Garden and Other Poems into a new book of common prayer. Nothing escapes her heart and eye: the elder nuns, slugs, the convent cat, songs in dreams, wandering, the dog's way, Brother Rabbit, Appalachian dulcimers and the songs of katydids.

—Darrell Bourque, former poet laureate of Louisiana, author of Megan's Guitar and Other Poems from Acadie.

My heart leaps up when Diane Moore brings out a new book. She seems to breathe in life, then breathe out poetry—she "poems" with such ease and grace. Her poems are strikingly original and challenging; she makes the reader work hard, but the rewards are great.

—Jane F. Bonin, retired professor of English, University of Louisiana, Lafayette, and author of Major Themes in Prizewinning American Drama and Mario Fratti.

Diane Moore is the rare poet who has the courage to probe the exquisite wounds of human existence: loneliness, despair, suffering, want, night terrors, and betrayal. Just when the reader is at the point of pressing the button for a narcotic to dull the pain, with imagination and skillful craft, she swings through with the wry humor of a raccoon singing barroom ballads, a demonic cat dusting her allergies with dander, a sweet Sister instructing a Psalm reader to break at the asterisk or risk being swept away with the wicked, and, most healing, with joy-filled lessons learned in the course of her God-centered life.

—Anne Simon, Louisiana District Judge, Retired.

Diane Moore's eye is more precise than most painters, and she uses that eye to make a sacred music full of love and sympathy for what often gets ignored or forgotten. She is a wonderful contemporary amalgam of Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman. Read her now and be delighted.

—Chuck Taylor, author of Magical, Fantastical, Alphabetical Soup.

Diane Moore has become a master of seeing, describing, and immersing herself in other lives. Her retired nun, Sister Mary Zita, "enters a dark cell / but her soul is not asleep;" a sculpture, "the stone angel is laughing;" and of Thomas Wolfe, she writes, "Each time I want his ghost / to give me a stone, a leaf, a door"… In A Convent Garden consists of meditations on spirituality, dreams, art, writers, travel, music, and nature.

—Gary Entsminger, author of Ophelia's Ghost and Fall of '33.

The cover photograph of In A Convent Garden and Other Poems was taken by Sr. Madeleine Mary, sister-in-charge of St. Mary’s Convent, Sewanee, Tennessee, and cover design was rendered by Martin Wayne Romero. Order copies from amazon.com after September 15, 2013.