Storyville

by Lois Battle

Overview

From turn-of-the-century New Orleans, a city renowned for sin, seduction, and sex, comes a tale of two women inextricably linked by “the District” of Storyville, where prostitution was legal—and flourishing.
 
Kate—young, beautiful, and abandoned by a man who doesn’t love her—finds herself thrown on the mercies of the city. Julia Randsome is a transplanted Yankee, a supporter of women’s rights, who against everyone’s advice marries into one of the city’s most prominent families. Though they occupy different universes in New Orleans, somehow all roads bring Kate and Julia to the same place…back to the District.
 
As lush and provocative as New Orleans is itself, Storyville sweeps across lines of caste and blood, money and desire—and into the voluptuous secrets of a city as tempting as any on earth.
 
“Lois Battle is a born storyteller.”—The Washington Post
 
“Storyville comes to lurid life.”—Kirkus Reviews

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101640227
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	12/01/1997
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	448
File size:	785 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Lois Battle's seven novels include Bed and Breakfast, Storyville, War Brides, and A Habit of the Blood, (all Penguin). She lives in Beaufort, South Carolina.

Editorial Reviews

While all of Battle's novels--including her last, "The Past Is Another Country" (1990)--entertain and please, her newest, and perhaps her best, goes beyond simple pleasure. Here Battle has harnessed her talent for storytelling to dramatize the conundrums of women's rights and traditional codes of conduct. Embracing the life stories of two very different women, "Storyville" is set in New Orleans, beginning in 1898, when city councilman Sidney Story managed to legalize prostitution within a proscribed area, and ending in 1943. Young, poor, orphaned, and naive, Kate is brought to the city by a slick, pleasure-grabbing salesman who quickly abandons her--deflowered, demoralized, and cashless. Beautiful and alluring, Kate is quickly put to work by one of the many enterprising madams in the "District." The brothel she calls home is owned by the Randsomes, a wealthy, high-society family. Charles Randsome has gone against tradition and married Julia, a do-gooder, suffragist Yankee. Their only son visits Storyville just before going off to die in the Spanish-American War and falls wildly in love with Kate, forging an unforeseen and ultimately life-saving bond between his upright mother and the fledgling courtesan. Battle has great command of her complex plot and its contentious historical context and conflicting passions. As she sets the steamy, jazzy ambience of New Orleans against the chilly propriety of Boston, the self-sacrificing dutifulness of Julia against the glamorous pragmatism of Kate, she gives form to the divided heart of womanhood. A natural for film, this will be an immensely popular book.

Donna Seaman

Battle's last, The Past is Another Country (1990), was set in Australia. But here she's come back home to the South—the Big Easy, circa 1900, no less—to tell a tale oozing with hypocrisy and vice. It's really the story of two women, high-society wife Julia Randsome, a transplanted Yankee who rides her bike to ladies' meetings and reads Ibsen, and Kate Cavanaugh, who is to become one of the most successful madams in the legendary red-light district of Storyville. Their paths intersect when Julia's son, Lawrence, is "given" Kate for a night as a going-away-to-the- Spanish-American-War present. At 15, Kate's turned to prostitution after being seduced and abandoned by a flimflam man. Nonetheless, there's something so fresh about her that Lawrence falls in love, only to die at the Battle of San Juan before he can return to rescue her. Meanwhile, Julia's perfect marriage to New Orleans scion Charles begins to fall apart when she discovers that part of his income is generated by property in Storyville. Ultimately, she takes in a pregnant Kate and leaves Charles, despite the fact that, at heart, Charles is a surprisingly reasonable, liberated man. And when Kate runs away from Julia to return to Storyville, Julia's left all alone on the high road. Storyville comes to lurid life under Battle's pen, as do the day's sexual double-standards. And, as usual, Battle's prose goes down as smoothly as a well-made Old-Fashioned. But there's a rub, because the main character, Julia, isn't consistently sympathetic, nor is the groundwork laid for her lionization as a feminist decades after her death. It's a lot easier to forgive and love the whore than the women's activist—which would be aninteresting irony, if only Battle seemed more in control of it. (First printing of 75,000; Literary Guild Dual Main Selection for February)

Kirkus Reviews