Best-selling author Mary
Lou Widmer has written another stunning fiction, The View
from Rampart Street, about the social life of New Orleans’
aristocrats in the 1840s and the young women who endured an
existence based on their unfortunate heritage.
Mariette Delon is a
beautiful young Quadroon, the daughter of a wealthy white Creole
and his mulatto mistress.
In sultry, tempestuous
New Orleans at that time, the port was bustling and the theater
was an immensely popular diversion. Underneath the façade of
this wealthy and proper society was a system called plaçage
that ruled the lives of beautiful young women like Mariette.
Trained all their lives to be plaçees, mistresses of
white Creole gentlemen, these ladies enjoyed the finer things,
such as a home on Rampart Street. But Mariette rebels against
the system, wishing only to be an actress and to love and be
loved by a man of her own choosing.
Against her will, she
attends the annual Quadroon Ball, where alliances between
Quadroons and Creole gentlemen are arranged. There she meets
handsome young Philippe Grillet, a wealthy aristocrat, who tells
her she should not be a plaçee but the wife of a Creole,
reinforcing her innermost desires. But Mariette’s father has
his own plans for her and she is forced into a contract she
detests. Her home is filled with luxuries, but her heart is
empty because she must submit to a shameful lifestyle.
Now it is up to Philippe
to save her, first by accepting a life-threatening challenge,
then by pursuing her across the continent to claim her for his
own. Facing seemingly insurmountable obstacles, these two
lovers will each have to fight to claim a destiny that is
rightfully theirs.
