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New Orleans in the 1830s was a dichotomy. The population of the city was ever-increasing, due to the city's burgeoning reputation as a port and the influx of American citizens as the result of the Louisiana Purchase. There were fortunes to be made; and, unfortunately, lives to be lost. For New Orleans was also a very violent city, attracting a criminal element eager to live off the fat of the land. And, in the summertime, the mysterious twin scythes of pestilence --- cholera and yellow fever --- would mysteriously appear, wreak havoc on the population, and disappear with the arrival of fall.
Barbara Hambly, who introduced Benjamin January in her brilliant novel A FREE MAN OF COLOR, returns her readers to January --- and to New Orleans in the summer of 1833 --- in FEVER SEASON. Ms. Hambly, in FEVER SEASON, continues her practice of focusing on a major element of historical New Orleans life. In A FREE MAN OF COLOR, Ms. Hambly used the quadroon balls --- a fascinating though repellent aspect of old New Orleans society --- as a story vehicle. In FEVER SEASON, she uses the mysterious pestilence that annually scourged New Orleans as a backdrop to an incredible tale of deceit, treachery, and murder.
FEVER SEASON finds Benjamin January utilizing his medical background by aiding the dying --- to the extent the field of medicine could at that place in time --- at Charity Hospital. While working there he encounters young Cora Chouteau, who has come to New Orleans in search of her "husband" who has been sold into slavery. January, although certain that Cora is a runaway slave herself, agrees to try to help her to pass a message to her beloved. January soon learns, however, that Cora is accused of murdering her master and poisoning his wife. He is soon swept into a maelstrom of intrigue in which he attempts to separate truth from lies and fiction from reality. This process finds him involved in the lives of personalities as varied as Emily Redfern, the vulgar American widow from whom Cora is fleeing, to Madame LaLaurie, the queen of Creole society; and from Marie Laveau, the voodoo queen of New Orleans, whose tentacles of influence, knowledge, and wisdom spread throughout the city, to Rose, a schoolmistress attempting to instill knowledge in young girls of color, in a place and a time where knowledge --- at least for them --- was not highly prized or valued.
The intricate plotting, incredible detail, and intriguing characterizations which are the hallmark of Ms. Hambly's work are all here in FEVER SEASON as she makes a dangerous and fascinating place and era come alive for modern readers. One cannot say enough about Ms. Hambly's meticulous research, and, by equal measure, the skill with which she infuses the fruits of it into her work of fiction. All history should be related so well, and with such love.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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