A Free Man of Color (Benjamin January, Book 1) - Hardcover

Hambly, Barbara

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0553102583 ISBN 13: 9780553102581

Publisher: Bantam, 1997

Synopsis

Benjamin January, a Creole physician and piano teacher who has known the glories of Paris as well as of his native New Orleans, is at the Blue Ribbon Ball during Mardi Gras. Near the ball, Angelique Crozat, an octoroon who travels in the city's finest company, is found murdered--and there is no shortage of suspects. This novel transports the reader to the center of the cosmopolitan South in an age when both its glories and the forces which would tear it apart are equally in evidence.

About this title

Review:

In Barbara Hambly's rich and poignant thriller, it's 1833 and Ben January--a man of mixed blood making his living as a musician because he's not allowed to practice surgery--is back home in New Orleans after years of freedom in Paris. Trying to walk a caste line more complicated than India's, January risks his precarious position to investigate the killing of a young woman who--like his own younger, lighter half-sister--is the mistress of a wealthy white man. What has changed most in New Orleans while Ben was away is the influence of the white Americans: rough, ignorant, instinctively racist. Only one of these--a policeman named Abishag Shaw--seems to understand that January is at least as smart and valuable as he is, and even he at times appears to be ready to side with the white majority and pin the crime on Ben.

About the Author:

Barbara Hambly is the author of The Emancipator’s Wife, a finalist for the Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction. She is also the author of Fever Season, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and seven acclaimed historical novels.
From the Paperback edition.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bantam
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0553102583
• ISBN 13: 9780553102581
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320