Flags on the Bayou

A Novel

By: James Lee Burke

Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews, Michael Crouch, Dana Gourrier, Marin Ireland, January LaVoy, Ray Porter

Winner of the 2024 Edgar Award for Best Novel!

From American master James Lee Burke comes a novel set in Civil War-era Louisiana as the South transforms and a brilliant cast of characters—enslaved and free women, plantation gentry, and battle-weary Confederate and Union soldiers—are caught in the maelstrom.

In the fall of 1863, the Union army is in control of the Mississippi river. Much of Louisiana, including New Orleans and Baton Rouge, is occupied. The Confederate army is in disarray, corrupt structures are falling apart, and enslaved men and women are beginning to glimpse freedom.

When Hannah Laveau, a formerly enslaved woman working on the Lufkin plantation, is accused of murder, she goes on the run with Florence Milton, an abolitionist schoolteacher, dodging the local constable and the slavecatchers that prowl the bayous. Wade Lufkin, haunted by what he observed—and did—as a surgeon on the battlefield, has returned to his uncle’s plantation to convalesce, where he becomes enraptured by Hannah. Flags on the Bayou is an engaging, action-packed narrative that includes a duel that ends in disaster, a brutal encounter with the local Union commander, repeated skirmishes with Confederate irregulars led by a diseased and probably deranged colonel, and a powerful story of love blossoming between an unlikely pair. As the story unfolds, it illuminates a past that reflects our present in sharp relief.

James Lee Burke, whose “evocative prose remains a thing of reliably fierce wonder” (Entertainment Weekly), expertly renders the rich Louisiana landscape, from the sunsets on the Mississippi River to the dingy saloons of New Orleans to the tree-lined shores of the bayou and the cottonmouth snakes that dwell in its depths. Powerful and deeply moving, Flags on the Bayou is a story of tragic acts of war, class divisions upended, and love enduring through it all.

Critic reviews

"After award-winning author James Lee Burke delivers his introduction, a series of introspective monologues is brought vividly to life in six stellar performances. The setting is Louisiana during the late days of the Civil War. MacLeod Andrews, Michael Crouch, Dana Gourrier, Marin Ireland, January LaVoy, and Ray Porter portray all manner of humanity, including a ragtag collection of Union and Rebel soldiers, slave owners and slave catchers, free and enslaved women, and a deranged colonel and his band of marauding Confederate killers. The narrators deliver deeply felt first-person stories that neatly intertwine, and Burke delivers the epilogue. The unique narrations and Burke’s poetry weave a dreamscape of beauty, love, hatred, and horror—a reminder of the disastrous results that once arose in a divided nation."

Good

Enjoyed book interesting story great narrators did miss not having Will Pattern over all worth the listen.

Other worldly

This is the kind of book that has me immediately starting it again. So much to wonder over.

There are books and then there is literature, enjoy

Fantastic! Not sure how you will top this but I’m optimistic.Thanks for sharing with us.

One of His Best

There is no other author like James Lee Burke, who can with such few descriptive words take me to a bayou or room in a shack and make me feel like I am there.

Cajun country during the Civil War

The author speaks a bit at the end of this book, and among other things, says he thinks this book was his best work. This book is mighty good but his best? In my mind he's had so many great books I don't know how you can single out just one as his best. But since he's the author if he wants to think this, so be it!

This story is completely different from all his other books. This one takes us back to Civil War times although still in Cajun country in south Louisiana. There are a lot of different forces at work, the Unios soldiers who are occupying the area, the Confederate soldiers striving to take it back, the Jayhawkers who were sort of in between the two armies but mainly just plundered and destroyed everything in their wake, then there were the local citizens just trying to survive the war and have some kind of future, and finally there were the slaves who had the worst of it and had had the worst of it for many, many years. and they wanted their freedom

Into this environment the author crafts a great tale, although not always the happiest of times for just about everyone. It would have really sucked to be living in this time under these circumstances. Often, we think our current times are really bad, but it would take a lot to match the turmoil in this tale.