L. M. Young
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Review "Watch out for L.M. If this is where she is beginning, then I can't imagine where all this will end..." -- Thomas Rain Crowe, Native Press Prod
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uct Description Short stories from the South, particularly Cajun country. The flavors of South Louisiana permeate these stories, whose genres range from mysteries to experimental to noir. From the Publisher "Watch out for Linda Young! If this is where she is beginning, then I can't even imagine where all this will end-so many stories this Louisiana born woman has to tell." Thomas Rain Crowe From the Author When I was a child, I rode the train from South Louisiana into Texas. It was magical and devastating....for I saw the changes eroding the South even before the freedom riders had to come calling. And then there was war, forever war, and the demise of the white dress and gloves, thankfully buried with the hate. But one finger protrudes. Still. About the Author L.M. Young was born and raise in Abbeville, Louisiana. She is 100 percent Cajun. Most of L.M.'s stories take place in Louisiana, but she has written extensively about American lives in other regions. She has written for a variety of literary magazines is a former editor of Bishop's House Review (Duke U.) She has completed a novel and is currently at work on a second collection of stories. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. My best friend Pinch was murdered while I slept. The police reported that she was caught off guard, snuck up on, as Pinch would have said. I don't believe that for one blasted minute. I know she looked her killer in the eye, sized him up, laughed, then spit in his face. It all happened before my very eyes. I had dreamed about her death for the past year. In May of 1998, The New Orleans Social Services Office finally got divine guidance and madated that all social workers had to have a partner. This "buddy" would be assigned by the division. The new directive came as a result of what the Times-Picayune dubbed the Foster Child Murders. Nine children had been murdered in the last year, "suffocated tenderly," said the Medical Examiner, their bodies placed in the back seat of the city's trolleys. "Fragile spirits fluttering into the moss latticed oaks, riding to God on the St. Charles line." The children had already endured endless and unexplainable pain during their short time among brutal adults. Sexual abuse, torture, starvation, all criminal in their lack of connection with life. One of the trolley drivers, a black man who had worked the Canal Street lines for over forty years and had witnessed life on the mean streets, broke down in front of the cameras and wept. He said he saw a fine mist swirl around the child he had found, a little black girl of six years old. The "dancing fog" vanished into popping fireflies as he approached her. The same Medical Examiner, always there for public events, used the word "reposed," saying that in all his years working on the most vicious murders, this was the first time he was truly terrified. "When I cut them open," he told a reporter, "I saw their little souls rise up, and then I heard a child giggle." His name was Harlen Boudreaux and he retired after autopsying the ninth child. My name is Hannah Dubois. I am a social workd assigned to investigate child abuse cases in the most forgotten areas of the heavenly city of New Orleans. After my first two years on the job, I stopped seeing the perpetrators as pathological. They were simply evil, doomed, without hope of redemption. Evil is evil no matter how many time you toss the coin. I had met five of the murdered foster children during some initial investigations; two were my cases and I had placed them in foster care. Tasha and Kenneth were lucky I thought; they had gone to caring foster parents. Tasha was the ninth child, and it was a week after her death that I was partnered. Earlene Washington became my buddy. She had already been my friend
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