Poor Banished Children of Eve

In the tradition of William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams, Poor Banished Children of Eve is the haunting saga of the Duval/Leveque clan of Maringouin County, Mississippi, a family tormented by a history of incest and insanity. The story revolves around beautiful, tempestuous Angelique Leveque whose mother Solange Duval Leveque had spent the past twenty-one years, since Angelique’s birth, locked in an upstairs bedroom “mad as a hatter,” as the townspeople said, a fact that no one seems to find peculiar. After all, doesn’t everyone have an insane woman locked in an upstairs bedroom? As the story begins, Angelique is about to be married to Charles Carrington, a “suitable young man,” with a secret and twisted torment of his own, and her impending marriage is breaking the hearts of the town’s young swains, not the least of which, two of her brothers. To add fuel to the fire, Antoine Babineaux returns from prison still in love with Angelique and determined to win her back. Thus begins the first tremors of a tidal wave of tragedy that sweeps over the family and the residents of Jezreel, Mississippi in a miasma of murder, insanity, incest and suicide, to finally reach and explosive and unorthodox climax where they find peace at last. Or do they?

After This Our Exile

After the years of turmoil and tragedy, life at La Bonne Vie Plantation settled into placid contentment (or a semblance of such) … until Nicolas (Nicky) Fontenot, prodigal son of Angelique and her brother François, returns after years in a Texas prison, and Antoine Babineaux II returns to claim his father’s name. At the heart of the story, and the hearts of Antoine and Nicolas, is beautiful, incorrigible Desirée Fontenot, the image of her mother Angelique. Ghosts of the past rise up and the lurid whispers and innuendos come to life once again. Then Uncle Virgil Leveque, the catalyst of the earlier tragedy, returns home after thirty years in an insane asylum, and unwittingly becomes the agent provocateur that sends the story hurtling toward its conclusion and closure at last. But is there truly closure?

The Idea of Ancestry

Life at La Bonne Vie Plantation is finally peaceful. Desirée and her rock star husband are on a world tour with his band. Nicolas has settled down on a farm in Kenya, and though his heart still aches for Desirée, he finds solace in raising his four year old daughter Jolie. Life is good … isn’t it?

Desirée, apathetic and longing for home and family, leaves the tour and flies home only a few months before it ends, causing questions she isn’t prepared to answer because she’s looking for answers herself. Her childhood sweetheart, Rory Duval, doesn’t make things any easier. Her old feelings for him flare up anew, and finally true happiness is within Desirée reach. When Nicky discovers Desirée is divorcing Antoine, he and Jolie go back home for the holidays, planning to get Desirée back and take her to Kenya, fulfilling the dream they once had. He arrives and is blindsided by Desirée and Rory’s engagement. Antoine wants his wife back, and he, Nicky and Rory collide in a determination to have the woman they all love. Meanwhile, Uncle Virgil is busy researching the dark mysteries of the family’s past. With Desirée’s help, answers are discovered in bits and pieces, finally coming together in a startling revelation. At last, things come around right and there is truly peace for the Duval/Leveque family.