Higher Ground

Five months after a hurricane has devastated New Orleans, native Nicole Naquin is home for the first time in decades. She's living next door to her mother Miss Gertie, an elderly evacuee from Lakeview reduced to pushing pills in a French Quarter gay bar. On the day Nicole's brother is killed in a drive-by shooting, she crashes the car into her high-school sweetheart's FEMA trailer, igniting a sexy romance among the ruins. Homicide detective Vinnie Panarello, himself charged with murder for a shooting after the storm, is assigned to the drive-by case, and works at furious cross-purposes with hippie sleuth Gary Cherry to find the brother's killer. In the process, they uncover much more than either expected. This award-winning comic noir novel is a romp though a gritty city fighting for its life, from the mayoral election to Mardi Gras, Lakeview to the French Quarter, the Garden District to Parish Prison. It's a classic story of individual redemption amid collective destruction, one in which crooked politicians rule the day, leaving displaced home owners, bereaved mothers, drag queens, and illegal immigrants to band together for survival and justice. The real protagonist—the people of New Orleans—won't be fooled any longer. As Miss Gertie says, “I'm moving to higher ground.”

James Nolan's Perpetual Care was awarded the the 2009 Next-Generation Indie Book Award for Best Short Story Collection. Among his six previous books are volumes of poetry, poetry in translation, criticism, and personal essays. A regular contributor to Boulevard, his work has appeared widely in such publications as The Southern Review, Poetry, Shenandoah, Utne, the anthologies New Orleans Noir and The Gastronomica Reader, and the Washington Post. He has received N.E.A., Javits, and two Fulbright Fellowships and has taught literature and creative writing at universities in San Francisco, Florida, Barcelona, Madrid, Beijing, and New Orleans. A fifth-generation native of the Crescent City, he lives in the French Quarter.