The Quarter Queen

A Voodoo witch must navigate a magically and racially divided 19th-century New Orleans to save her mother – and the soul of the city itself. An opulent debut inspired by the life of the historical Voodoo queen Marie Laveau.

New Orleans, 1843: the reigning Voodoo Queen is Marie Laveau, feared by foes and followers alike. Her daughter, Marie “Ree” Laveau the Second, is the opposite of her uncompromising mother – spoiled, willful, and rebellious – and opposes her at every turn. But when Ree finds her mother comatose in the bayou, cursed by the banished Voodoo King Jon the Conjurer – once Marie’s teacher, lover, and archenemy – her world is thrown out of joint.

While Marie hovers between life and death, Ree chases the secrets of the past to find a cure, and uncovers a web of alliances, dangers, and betrayal. To top it off, Henryk Broussard, Ree’s long-vanished childhood friend, returns as a witch hunter for the Church – with orders to investigate Ree. With more and more enemies at her back, including a puritanically minded brotherhood of alchemists and the slaveholding mayor of the city, Ree must face the past and fight her mother’s demons, which have now also become her own – or perish in the attempt.

Told in alternating timelines – Ree’s present and Marie’s rise to power twenty-five years earlier – The Quarter Queen paints an intimate yet epic portrait of mother and daughter and compellingly explores themes of racism, family, and femininity.