Benjamin January is a black man and a physician, trained in Paris. But upon returning to his birthplace of New Orleans, he makes his living as a musician because no free man of color such as himself can yet make a living as a doctor. Benjamin’s busy Mardi Gras season of playing at parties, balls and the opera is disrupted by an attack on the life of the opera director. Benjamin saves the man and becomes his confidant.

Who was responsible? The jealous, bickering members of the opera company? The director of the rival theatre company in town? A rival in love? Benjamin considers all of these things as he rehearses and plays, but underlying his thoughts is the worry that the opera itself, in this case Othello, is to blame. A passionate story of love between a black man and a white woman, here in New Orleans? Society accepts only the reverse -- rich white men taking quadroon mistresses and leading a shadowy half life in that basement society.

Anyone who has visited New Orleans and learned a little bit about the quadroon society will find all the blanks filled in this book. Not only does Benjamin play at a quadroon ball, his sister is a plantation owner’s mistress. And for those who have wondered at New Orleans’ voodoo aspects, Benjamin’s other sister is a practitioner. We even get a glimpse of the great voodoo queen Marie. Tucked inside the involving story are moments of home life and family get-togethers during Carnival:

‘January led the way around to the back of the house, where hearth-heat rolled forth like a summer blessing from the candle-lit kitchen. Jacque’s sister Penelope, resplendent in the remains of a masquerade fairy gown from some earlier portion of the evening, stirred something in a cauldron at the fire. Trestles and planks lined the back wall of the Bichet cottage, laden with bread puddings and gumbos, fried oysters and pralines white and brown, a scattering of burned-down tallow candles and a thousand varieties of dirty rice. Mixed in among everybody’s home specialties were whatever those who worked at the Verandah Hotel or the Café des Exiles had brought away from the kitchens at closing time. Across the yard, red curtains muffled the cottage’s doors, but someone had tied them in knots to keep them out of the way. Music rolled out the way heat did from the kitchen, filling the candle-starred black gulf of the yard, rich as tapestry and gold.’

This is truly a book to lose yourself in, coming to the surface from time to time to blink at the bright lights. Weeks after you read it, you may not remember how it ended but you will remember the color, the fabric and the taste as surely as if you had been to New Orleans yourself.

And the good news is, there are four previous books to this series. Jump in, the water is fine.

--Diane Gotfryd