Published by Atlantic Monthly Press on July 11, 2023

Set in Louisiana during the Civil War, Flags on the Bayou is a departure from the crime novels that James Lee Burke usually writes. While the novel reads like a thriller, many of the crimes that inform the novel are crimes against humanity — slavery, the wholesale slaughter of war, enforced poverty, sexual abuse of women. Yet circumstances make key characters into killers, setting up a crime story about two women who must run from the law, women who (in a nineteenth century version of Thelma and Louise) would rather die than tolerate more abuse.

Near the end of 1863, Confederate soldiers are in retreat. By virtue of the Emancipation Proclamation, there are no more slaves, but not all plantation owners agree. Slaves continue to work in the fields while slave catchers continue to round them up, whether or not they have been emancipated, to sell them at slave auctions.

Hannah Laveau is a (former) slave who lost track of her son at Shiloh. Hannah might be a witch. God might be talking to her. She might have mutilated and killed plantation owner Minos Suarez after he raped her. She wanted to kill him but isn’t sure whether she did. She might have done the same to her jailer.

Pierre Cauchon, a constable in charge of Negro affairs who is widely regarded as white trash, considers it his duty to bring Hannah to justice, but he must deal with the humiliations he has endured from Wade Lufkin, Hannah’s (former) owner. A duel with Lufkin scars Cauchon’s face but does not solve his problem. Nor does it resolve Lufkin’s tender feelings about Hannah or Cauchon’s about Darla Babineaux, a (former) slave owned by Suarez who refuses to work in the fields again. Wade and Cauchon are both tormented by guilt about the harm they have caused to others, just as they are tormented by love.

Florence Milton is a teacher and an abolitionist. Her skin is the right color to earn respect in the South, but she is regarded as a criminal because she works to help escaped slaves find their freedom. Her gender makes her a target regardless of her political beliefs.

Two characters, both brutal and crazed, represent the worst of the Union and Confederate officers. Colonel Carleton Hayes is a character who, more than any other, embodies evil. He commands hundreds of irregulars, fighting his own battles by unconventional means. He has slashed and burned his way through the war, destroying a Texas village because a woman spat on one of his men. Yet he considers himself an exemplar of southern manners and decorum. Captain John Endicott kills and rapes indiscriminately. Other soldiers say that Endicott does not represent the Union but they do nothing to stop him.

Burke is one of my favorite writers. His characters are complex, his stories move at a steady pace, and his prose is astonishing. His narration and dialog are always quotable:

Colonel Hayes: “There is no equal to poor white trash when they get their hands on a Bible.”

Hayes: “War is a confession of failure, and its perpetrators are the merchants of death, not because they are killers but because they never had the courage to live a decent life.”

Cauchon: “With regularity, North and South, we give power to people who have no interest in us.”

Cauchon: “You don’t need to seek revenge against your enemies. The bastards eventually fall in their own shite.”

Cauchon: “Never let them tell you that there is rhyme or reason to war, lest you join the lunatics who have perpetuated its suffering from the cave to the present.”

Burke never writes a novel based on a simplistic view of the world. He recognizes good and evil and understands the vast area of gray that separates them. Soldiers and officers from both the North and the South committed atrocities during the Civil War. Soldiers fought for pride more often than they fought for ideology. Soldiers from the North looted plantations and confiscated livestock that owners needed to feed their children. Soldiers from both sides raped women. There was no glory in the Civil War, no matter how often its battles are reenacted or its officers are commemorated.

Burke considers Flags on the Bayou to be his best novel. I think he said the same thing about The Jealous Kind (2016), a novel that I would probably put at the top of the list, but Flags on the Bayou belongs in his top five. It brings the tension and pace of a thriller as it encourages the reader to contemplate the moral issues that surround war in general, and the Civil War in particular.

RECOMMENDED

I've been reading James Lee Burke's books since the 1980's so I feel like I am quite familiar with his writing style. This novel is completely different from his previous works and took me by surprise. It is more of an historical novel, based upon the ugly facts in our history at the end of the Civil War. While I am not a fan of historical fiction this one was better than most that I have read over the years. If you were looking for the Robicheaux or Clete type characters you won't find them. That being said, one simply cannot deny the genius of James Lee Burke's talent.

In the midst of the Civil War, Louisiana is a mostly lawless place where Union troops, renegade rebels, local constables, individual plantation owners, and even voodoo queens assert their power where they can trying to survive the dangerous present and prepare for an uncertain future. The only thing anyone knows for sure is that just about everyone will suffer, and suffer badly.

James Lee Burke has written extensively about Louisiana, is mostly known for writing about Louisiana, and after 40 full length novels has created his tour de force tale of Louisiana. He himself can say in his afterword that he has written his best novel, a bold statement that is also a true one.

Much has been written about the Civil War, and about the horrors of war (that war and others). This is not the first book to alternate between the points of view of half a dozen or so characters, even when they're all in the first person. But Burke has nevertheless come up with one of the best books ever in all of those categories.

What sets it apart for me is how well he captures the unique voice of each character in the vernacular of the day (without overloading us with language that is no longer acceptable, though there surely is some, as there must inevitably be when recreating that era). And of course he captures the unique sense of place that was Louisiana in 1863, especially the bayou, as he has done in the past.

I've been singing a song for decades that was recorded by the Holy Modal Rounders called Voodoo Queen Marie, about Marie Laveau, a famous practitioner from that time. One of the central characters in this book is Hannah Laveau, who may or may not be related to Marie and who may or may not be a practitioner herself. Either way, she totally captured my imagination and is certainly a character to remember.

Thanks to NetGalley, the author, and publisher for an advance reading copy.

Ways of War

“It’s meant to be a historical book, and it is meant to be about today. The same monsters are still out there.”

James Lee Burke has recreated the hell our Civil War empowered mankind to muster. There is so much evil in these pages, unimaginable atrocities committed under the guise of patriotism and codes of honor. In recent books, Mr. Burke has used the supernatural to further some plotlines. Here there is no need to magnify what mortal men are capable of.

Memorable characters from all different walks populate this novel: free men, slaves, Union troops, Confederate “irregulars.” Some are pure monsters; some are people finding themselves venturing into areas their consciences would never have imagined going. Hannah Laveau, a former slave searching for her son, is at the heart of the story. She endured repeated sexual assaults and is now not sure if she is the one who brutally murdered her assailant. A white plantation owner, Wade Lufkin, is helping Hannah evade arrest, yet he is single-handedly trying to turn the Confederacy’s fortunes around by bankrolling their fight with his gold.

One of the characters mentions she disagrees with Darwin’s theory of evolution, that we are not all descended from the same line. There are people so deranged who must have evolved from a different tree. This is a theme Mr. Burke has brought up in previous books, as well. War is just the great enabler for evil, “...perpetuated its suffering from the cave to the present.”

James Lee Burke is one of our greatest writers and he says this is his finest book. The South today, as shaped by the Civil War, has often had its gravitational pull in his works. “Flags on the Bayou” is the treatment on the subject he was destined to write. A brilliant work.

Thank you to Grove Atlantic, Atlantic Monthly Press and NetGalley for providing an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review. #FlagsontheBayou #NetGalley

I have been reading James Lee Burke novels for what seems like forever and I consider him one of America’s greatest living writers. In the Acknowledgment, he says he considers Flags on the Bayou his best work and it would be hard to disagree. Set in Louisiana in ,1863,, at the height of the Civil War as much of the South has already been lost, Burke shows not only the horrors of war but the futility.

The story is told from the perspectives of six characters, all flawed and further damaged by the war. Hannah Laveau is an enslaved woman thought by many to be a voodoo woman. Her master loaned her out to another plantation where she was viciously assaulted. Wade Lufkin is the nephew of Hannah’s master who, rather than fight, chose to be an army surgeon, was wounded and is filled with guilt because he killed another man. Pierre Cauchon was wounded as a soldier and is now a constable in charge of Negro affairs. Florence Milton is a northern white abolitionist who had run a private school in New Iberia before the war. She chose to work in battleground hospitals tending to the wounded from both sides. Later, in an effort to help Hannah, her naivety puts them both in danger. Colonel Hayes is the leader of a band of pro-southern jayhawkers who set up camp on the Lufkin plantation. Hayes is slowly going mad from syphilis. Darla Babineaux is a free Black woman who has, for some reason, remained on the plantation where Hannah was assaulted and where the man who assaulted her was murdered.

The writing, as always in a James Lee Burke book, is beautiful, the descriptions vivid, even as he portrays the horrors confronting the characters. At its base, this is a Manichean tale of good versus evil. There are no heroes in the war and neither side is innocent. There are only damaged survivors whose lives will be forever changed. Each of the characters, even as they desire to do good, are forced to go against their nature. There is also a sense of spirituality throughout the story especially in the ending, one that seemed, at first, out of place but, as I thought more about it, I realized was exactly the right ending.

As always, after reading one of Burke’s books, it will stay with me for a long long time. This is a beautiful, powerful story and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

I received an arc of this book from Netgalley and the publishers in exchange for an honest review

Author James Lee Burke, who pens the Detective Dave Robicheaux series and the Holland Family Saga books, often addresses good vs. evil in his novels. In 'Flags on the Bayou', a standalone novel about the Civil War, Burke once again focuses on the malevolence in humanity, exacerbated by the institute of slavery.

*****

The story opens in the middle of the Civil War, when things are going badly for the South. The Union Army controls the Mississippi River and occupies much of Louisiana, the Confederate Army is reeling from its losses, and maundering irregular troops are killing, burning, and destroying. Slaves dream of freedom, slave owners fear losing their 'property', and death and destruction are rampant.

The story revolves around six main characters:

⦿ Wade Lufkin: a former Confederate soldier who marched with the Eighth Louisiana Infantry, having been promised he would serve as a surgeon's assistant and never shed the blood of his fellow man. Lufkin recalls, "I sawed limbs and stacked them in piles at First and Second Manassas and especially at Sharpsburg, where the Eighth Louisiana was mowed down in a cornfield near Dunker Church."

One day Lufkin took a stroll in a snow-covered forest in Virginia and came upon a Union soldier reading a book. Lufkin tried to start a friendly conversation, but the frightened soldier fired a revolver. Lufkin became enraged and savaged the man with a bayonet. Lufkin now has a Minie ball in his left leg and is recuperating on his Uncle Charles's Lady of the Lake Plantation in New Iberia, plagued with guilt about the Union fighter he killed.

⦿ Pierre Cauchon: the oversight constable for Negro legal problems in New Iberia. Cauchon rides up to Lady of the Lake Plantation on his beloved horse Varina, to question a slave called Hannah Laveau. Laveau is suspected of being an insurrectionist and voodoo practitioner who's stirring up her fellow slaves.

Plantation owner Charles Lufkin insults Cauchon by telling him to go to the back door, brushing off his inquiries about Hannah, and calling him white trash. As the humiliated Cauchon leaves, he notes, "I feel small and my head is dizzy....I would prefer to be disemboweled and have my entrails set afire, as was done to felons in ancient times, rather than re-live the last ten minutes of life."

Cauchon is haunted by another incident as well. When Cauchon's battalion fought at the Battle of Shiloh Church, Major Ira Jamison - who was supposed to be on their flank - just didn't show up. Thus Cauchon's battalion was mercilessly mowed down, and Cauchon's fury has not abated.

Rising tensions result in a gun duel between army veterans Wade Lufkin and Pierre Cauchon, an incident that has long-term consequences for both men.

⦿ Hannah Laveau: Alleged voodoo priestess Hannah is an attractive slave owned by Charles Lufkin. Owing a debt, Lufkin loaned Hannah to a fellow plantation owner named Minos Suarez. Suarez tried to convince Hannah to 'lie with him', and when Hannah refused, Suarez brutally assaulted her.

Hannah dreams of getting revenge against Suarez, and recalls, "As he got off me, his naked body silhouetted against the moon, his chest heaving, I could feel my hand curling around an imaginary knife that one day would be real."

Hannah also dreams of being reunited with her young son. Hannah was a cook for Confederate troops at Shiloh Church, and was separated from her little boy during the horrific battle there.

When rapist Minos Suarez is murdered with "his reproductive equipment lopped off with a butcher knife", Constable Cauchon comes back to arrest Hannah for the crime.

⦿ Florence Milton: a Northerner from Massachusetts who runs a private school in New Iberia. Florence is an abolitionist who has little use for the authorities in New Iberia, especially Sheriff Jimmy Lee Romain. Florence observes that Romain "is not a bad man but, unfortunately, a nincompoop." She goes on, "Maybe Mr. Darwin is right about the fish crawling onto the land and becoming simians and eventually the human species. If so, I suspect that someone stepped on the head of Sheriff Romain's ichthyological ancestor."

Florence manipulates Romain, "who probably cannot count his toes without an abacus", to allow her to visit alleged murderer Hannah Laveau in the Negro jail. Florence helps the slave escape, and when the two women are hunted by Constable Cauchon and slave catchers, the ladies show their mettle.

⦿ Colonel Carleton Hayes: leader of a renegade troop of filthy raggedy Confederate men. Hayes has burned colored settlements, robbed the bank in Opelousas, lynched people he believed to be abolitionists, killed and wounded Union soldiers and civilians, and fired a cannon at Union General Nathaniel Banks in New Iberia. Hayes is cross-eyed with a syphilitic face, and he bemoans his appearance.

When Hayes is confronted about human heads hanging from the saddles of his men, he alleges, "Those are redbones who raped a white woman. Their heads will be on pikes outside St. Martinville before the sun is set, a reminder to the Negro population as well as redbones."

Colonel Hayes and his marauders camp at the Lufkins' Lady of the Lake Plantation, and when Charles Lufkin is chastised about allowing this, he responds, "Our boys gave their best, but they're outnumbered and without food and ammunition. In a short time we will be at the mercy of the Unionists, many of whom are depraved. Colonel Hayes will not let us down."

⦿ Darla Babineaux: a freed slave woman who lives on the Minos Suarez plantation. Darla likes to wear purple and takes a shine to Constable Pierre Cauchon. Darla offers herself to the lawman, who refuses because it "would be an abuse of power." Darla replies, "No, it ain't. Men did that to me many years ago. I killed one man and almost killed another. They were both white. Ain't nobody bothered me since. You're a different kind of white man, Mr. Pierre."

Darla tells Pierre about treasure (gold plates, silverware, jewelry, etc.) buried by Minos Suarez, to hide it from the Union army, and reveals that she knows the location of the cache.

Cauchon tries to protect Darla from a predatory Union officer named Captain John Endicott, who wants both Darla and the Suarez treasure. All this results in Cauchon and Darla fleeing, followed by Endicott and his men.

*****
All the action comes full circle by the end of the story, after much death, devastation and havoc, and an epilog describes the fate of the main protagonists.

The story emphasizes that humanity's worst instincts come out in war, and points out that the North means to conquer the South by burning it to a cinder and starving the population. Meanwhile, individual evil people, such as slave catchers, depraved soldiers, and entitled officers, think nothing of raping, robbing, murdering, and so on.

As always, Burke's prose is very evocative, and the reader can picture the bayous and swamps of Louisiana; imagine the tents of the prostitutes, and the dirty smelly pimps that monitor them; taste the blood and poison sucked from a snake bite, and so on. For example, when a coffin containing a dead soldier is pried open, a nauseated observer reports, "From my horse I can smell it....I saw a lot of woe at Shiloh and Corinth, but this is the worst. The body was probably submerged in sawdust and chopped-up ice weeks ago, but some other kind of preservative was probably poured into the soup as well, chemicals that had the opposite consequence. The skin has shrunken and looks webbed on the bones and painted with yellowish-tan shellac, the bones sticking through, like a pterodactyl that has fallen from the sky. I put my handkerchief to my mouth because I'm fixing to throw up."

Burke believes that Flags on the Bayou is his best work, but its hard for me to judge, as I'm a big fan of all his novels.

Thanks to Netgalley, James Lee Burke, and Grove Atlantic for a copy of the manuscript.

JLB says that this is the best book he has written. It is easy and a true pleasure to agree with him. This novel takes the reader to the bayous of Louisiana, where the carnage and destruction of the Civil War may be breathing its last painful gasps. The story is focused on the viewpoints of several characters, two enslaved women, a nephew of the plantation life, a Southern enforcer, a Boston abolitionist, a vengeful Union officer and a renegade Confederate colonel. Each one has their own story to tell, and each is intricately linked to the future and fortunes of the others. Free will exists for them to choose actions that may imperil or save them…. but for how long and at what cost? I was mesmerized by the language they spoke, the juxtaposition of the war vs. the natural beauty around them, and the constant drumbeat of the dangers closing in. (I can hear the echoes of their choices reach into the future of this country and choices that are daily made by both the powerful as well as ones’ neighbors.) Highly recommended. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing this title.

Burke writes in the afterword to this magnificent novel that he believes it is the best he's written. I'm not sure if I agree with him if only because I think all of his novels are the best he's written until I get to the next one. Set in Louisiana during the waning days of the Civil War, this tells the twisted tale of Hannah, an enslaved woman who may or may not have killed a plantation owner, Wade, the wounded and later maimed nephew of the man who owns her, Pierre, wounded during the war and now dealing with "negro" issues for the government, Florence, a Northern abolitionist determined to help Hannah, the loathsome Union officer, Captain John Endicott, and the seriously dangerous Confederate Colonel Carleton Hayes. It all revolves around Hannah, who is also searching for her son Samuel, who, as a toddler, went missing at Shiloh. Know that there is horrible violence here and yet also moments of incredible grace. The viciousness of war, of humans pervades. Burke writes not only amazing characters but also atmospherics such as smell. His passion for the story comes through, along with his message. Burke's writing is distinctive- there's a rhythm to it that pulls you in. Thanks to the publisher for the ARC. Can't recommend this more highly- it's terrific.

James Lee Burke is such a pleasure to read. His Flags on the Bayou is set in Louisiana near the end of the Civil War and told through the lens of multiple characters throughout every level society on both sides. Flags on the Bayou depicts the horrors of wars, the upheaval of the societal caste system and an unremitting love that won't be denied.

Burke has penned a powerful, eloquent story that has striking parallels to our society today. Burke transports the reader to the swamps of the Louisianan bayou and makes a point that is desperately needed today: just because you are on the "good/winning" side of a fight doesn't make you saint anymore than it makes the other side the devil. It isn't one or the other. Dickheads and a-holes abound. It's a good lesson for all of us to remember.

Flags on the Bayou is griping and poetic and should not be missed!

Thank you to Atlantic Monthly Press and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an advanced copy of Flags on the Bayou.

Even though I grew up in southeast Louisiana, I somehow managed to miss reading a title by James Lee Burke. Now that I am back in the general area, I wanted to dive into more local literature.

Flags on the Bayou was an excellent first read from this author. He weaves together a fantastic tale set during the Civil War. Plenty of nuances and sometimes I wished I had written out my own character chart to track everyone and their connections.

He paints a picture of life in Louisiana during that time including the issue of slavery. I could feel the sultry heat of the land (literally living it now!) and imagine the struggle occurring as some clung to what had been while others sought to embrace a future where all lives are valued.

This is not a quick read nor one that qualifies for 'brain candy' where you escape the everyday. Rather it is a rich historical fiction title that will enrich your understanding of a turbulent time in American history.

I'll be seeking out more titles of his to read now that I know firsthand what a phenomenal storyteller Mr. Burke is.

Sinking into a JamesLee Burke book is like sinking into a hot bath on a muggy day with steam fogging up the mirrors until everything seems slightly changed from the known world to a dream world. In this book, he takes us far from his usual protagonists to that period of the final days of the Civil War in Louisiana where slavery still exists yet unrest writes large upon the wall of everyone’s life as wounded people grapple with the profound changes in their lives. People unmoored make poor decisions exposing their frailties and desperation as they struggle to survive those times. Yet Burke does not shy away from running parallels between those end times and motivations that expose their ties to the world of today. Moving and majestic in scope. A book to stay with you for a long time to come. Highly recommend.

Book Review
Flags on the Bayou
James Lee Burke
reviewed by Lou Jacobs


readersremains.com | Goodreads


Once again, Burke weaves an epic and tantalizingly complex tale set in Louisiana at the end of the Civil War. With his customary haunting and elegant prose, he revisits a similar setting from “White Doves At Morning”, with the same power and elegance, but introduces a new set of colorful and flawed characters.

He continues to utilize his usual mesmerizing character and plot development in the lush, florid setting of Louisiana. As the Confederacy disintegrates with the Union Army now controlling and occupying most of Louisiana, the conflict and continual skirmishes persist, alongside ongoing atrocities committed by both sides. In vivid and brutal detail, Burke paints a captivating tale of war horrors, slavery, power corruption, women and class dominance. He continually offers thought-provoking statements, as relevant now as then.

The setting is Louisiana, 1863, where devastation reigns supreme in the turbulent South. Sons of both the North and South lay dead and mutilated on the battlefields. Burke presents a cast of colorful, yet seriously flawed characters interacting to depict various shades of “good and evil”. The story unfolds from multiple perspectives. We meet Hannah Laveau, recently released from slavery but still working on the plantation. She is haunted by the separation and probable loss of her son Samuel during the bloody Union attack on Shiloh Church. Charles Lufkin, a landowner, “rents” her to Minos Suarez who repeatedly brutalizes and rapes her. When she escapes the untenable situation, Suarez is found murdered with his throat slit. Naturally, Hannah is assumed to be guilty of murder and hunted. One of the hunters is Pierre Cauchon, a constable tasked “to oversee the Negro problem”. Pierre, despite being physically and emotionally scarred from his recent war experiences, still has a conscience. He crosses paths with the ruthless and degenerate Union officer, Captain John Endicott, who is despised even by his fellow soldiers, and the deranged and likely psychotic Colonel Carleton Hayes, the leader of a band of Confederate irregulars. Florence Milton, a schoolmistress and abolitionist, takes Hannah under her wing as they both go into hiding from the “law” (Pierre Cauchon) and ever-present “slave catchers”. Conflict abounds as Wade Lufkin, an ex-surgeon’s assistant and Charles’ nephew, returns home to the plantation to recover from physical and emotional damage on the battlefield, including the inadvertent killing of an “innocent” Union soldier. He becomes infatuated with Hannah and enters into a reckless confrontation with Pierre Cauchon, which results in a needless duel that leaves him with a severely disfigured face when his gun unexpectedly explodes.

At age eighty-seven, James Lee Burke remains a superb storyteller at the peak of his game. His vivid descriptions and development of complex situations, all showcasing man’s inhumanity to man, result in steadily ratcheting up the tension to almost intolerable limits. Clearly, the same situations persist even today, albeit in different forms. Sometimes it’s necessary to study past evils in hopes of dispelling them in the present and future.

Thanks to NetGalley and Atlantic Monthly Press for providing an Uncorrected Proof in exchange for an honest review. Hopefully, Burke is not finished with penning these marvelous works.

Flags on the Bayou is a stunning novel, beautifully written, and absolutely mesmerizing. Neither the character development, the plot, nor the setting dominate the others. In this Civil War-set story, set in Louisiana, we see the horrors of war, the horror of slavery, and the horrors of power - of man over woman, of whites over Blacks, of indecency over decency, and much more. In not-very-subtle moments through the novel, author James Lee Burke drops lines that no discerning reader will mistake for anything but comparisons with recent history, for human beings have hardly changed over the more than century-and-a-half that has passed since white men set upon each other for complex reasons not easily defined as they often are as "slavery." Burke leaves his readers with so much to think about. I cannot but agree with his not in the Acknowledgements section that Flags on the Bayou is, indeed, his best.

One of the greatest curses ever inflicted on humans is the lust for power and the crushing dominance over others.

James Lee Burke circles the wagons around this truism. Flags on the Bayou hovers at the doorway of a brood of characters so complex, so flawed, and so hell-bent on realizing their own wayward means to an end. The result is a novel that will give you pause as you sift through the horrors of war and experience the evil that walks on two legs.

1863 brings with it the devastation wrought with a vengeance throughout the South. The tide is turning and so is the realization that mothers' sons lay mutilated and dead on the battlefield no matter the uniform that they wear. And the generals raise their mighty swords leading victims onward, on both sides, to eventual death. All in the cause of preservation of an evil practice that demeans its victims and gurantees final judgment of those who procur it.

James Lee Burke creates these characters with definitive shades of treacherousness and wrath. Some flit back and forth between the search for goodness and the actual loss of it time and time again. Burke is renowned for his talent of painting characters on the edge. These are the "irregulars" of life who don't quite fit perfectly into recognizable slots of honorable behavior.

We'll meet Wade Lufkin, an artist and a surgeon's assistant, who returns home to southern Louisiana with a minie still lodged in his leg. An unnecessary duel will leave him maimed physically and emotionally. Hannah Laveau, a slave cook for the Confederate army, is searching for her lost son at Owl Creek during a squirmish there. Pierre Cauchon, denoted as a "white trash" constable, looking for the escaped Hannah. Florence Milton, a New England school teacher, puts herself in danger as an abolitionist in the South. Colonel Carleton Hayes, a vigilante, who kills abolitionists among other heinous deeds.

The tension is felt from the very beginning pages as James Lee Burke reveals the rawness of his words and the vivid descriptors of the brutality of human vs. human. Flags on the Bayou speaks with a loud voice of the atrocities that befell the innocent and the not so innocent. It will not be for everyone.......but sometimes we need to stare down this evil of the past as it slowly permeates and stains the ground of the present.

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley for an honest review. My thanks to Grove Atlantic and to the talented James Lee Burke for the opportunity.

Many thanks to Grove Atlantic, James Lee Burke, and NetGalley for the ARC of this book.

The story intertwines multiple story threads around a small area of Louisiana during the time of the Civil War. At the end, James Lee Burke brings those threads together to the final and satisfying conclusion.

The story is told from the perspective of many of the characters, with each chapter taking the voice of one of the characters. This helps gain insight into the thoughts and motivations of each of the characters.

Set in Louisiana during the Civil War this is a somewhat plodding book filled with colorful characters and plenty of violence and depravity as well as goodness and miracles. The descriptions are vivid as the war comes ever closer to plantations in rural Louisiana as people who live there deal with all of the horrors and the changes to their way of life.

I have one word for this stunning latest from JLB…..MESMERIZING

I hope this novel gives him a Pulitzer. His always magical prose, are elevated here with his take on the civil war, and the sheer blood bath of it all. His humanity for his larger than life characters is astute and meaningful. I loved this book!

James Lee Burke writes at the end of this novel that this is his best novel. From his perspective as an author perhaps it is. Burke has been toying with a Civil War novel for some time with mentions of the war in other novels, not to mention his sixth Robicheaux novel In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead.

Flags on the Bayou is indeed a beautiful piece of work. Burke's evocative prose is instantly recognizable with his descriptive passages; while not always "moonlight and magnolias," Burke is more "Spanish moss and swamp gas." It is beautiful and having spent much of my time in south Louisiana I can tell you that he is spot on. It is beautiful, mysterious, a bit dangerous, and totally alluring.

In this novel Burke presents us with good and evil characters as he always does. They are tortured with by their personal histories, circumstances, and life itself. Is it my long history with Burke's work that causes me to see a bit of Dave and Clete in some of these characters? The plot moves along rather quickly and comes to a satisfying conclusion.

This is an excellent addition to the Burke oeuvre and adds complexity to his catalogue. And if you've never read any Burke at all, you're just fine with this one, too! But if you read this novel you'll want to read everything else so be forewarned!

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

James Lee Burke at his best with a magnificent whodunit set in Louisiana during the American Civil War. Superbly plotted and blessed with a terrific cast of exquisitely drawn characters, this highly entertaining novel kept me enthralled from start to finish! One of America's best wordsmiths at work today!

Highly recommended and to be enjoyed without any moderation whatsoever!

Many thanks to Atlantic Monthly Press and Netgalley for this fabulous ARC!

Thank you to the publisher & Netgalley for an advance copy of this title! James Lee Burke is one of my all time favorite authors. He can literally paint a picture using sights, sounds, thoughts & even smells that transports the reader into the scene that is unfolding on his pages!

His latest Flags on the Bayou, is no different. Among the backdrop of the South during the Civil War, Burke manages to transplant the reader into the minds of conflicting characters who struggle with the new reality of what is unfolding.

This book is classic Burke, through and through, as characters compete for your emotions ranging from compassion to contempt!

Publisher Description
In the fall of 1863, the Union Army is in control of the Mississippi River. Much of Louisiana, including New Orleans and Baton Rouge, is occupied. The Confederate Army is in disarray, corrupt structures are falling apart, and enslaved men and women are beginning to glimpse freedom.

When Hannah Laveau, an enslaved woman working on the Lufkin plantation, is accused of murder, she goes on the run with Florence Milton, an abolitionist schoolteacher, dodging the local constable and the slavecatchers that prowl the bayous. Wade Lufkin, haunted by what he observed—and did—as a surgeon on the battlefield, has returned to his uncle’s plantation to convalesce, where he becomes enraptured by Hannah. Flags on the Bayou is an engaging, action-packed narrative that includes a duel that ends in disaster, a brutal encounter with the local Union commander, repeated skirmishes with Confederate irregulars led by a diseased and probably deranged colonel, and a powerful love blossoming between an unlikely pair. As the story unfolds, it illuminates a past that reflects our present in sharp relief.

James Lee Burke, whose “evocative prose remains a thing of reliably fierce wonder” (Entertainment Weekly), expertly renders the rich Louisiana landscape, from the sunsets on the Mississippi River to the dingy saloons of New Orleans to the tree-lined shores of the bayou and the cottonmouth snakes that dwell in its depths. Powerful and deeply moving, Flags on the Bayou is a story of tragic acts of war, class divisions upended, and love enduring through it all.