RE: THE WHITE ARMYOut of New Orleans before the catastrophe that was made by a hurricane and, as Dante wrote, “of false gods who lied,” comes The Parable of the Beatitudes, part one in the New Orleans Trilogy. The Parable of the Beatitudes portrays New Orleans as Dante’s purgatory, a place where the sins of men are exposed for all to see, where redemption is close at hand but most often lost, where the mind, body, and soul are tested.This world is revealed by the lives of two social workers, Hannah Dubois (white and nicknamed Scrimp) and Earlene Washington (African-American and nicknamed Pinch), who start their own business, Social Investigations, in order to solve the murders of ten foster children in New Orleans, Louisiana. The NOPD, the Catholic Church, and politicians have sidestepped clues that point to those who hold great power. As Hannah and Earlene find more and more evidence, they also know that they are dealing with a force that crosses into the realm of the spiritual. Earlene is murdered with a sword from the famous Cabildo but returns to join her ghostly friends in the Heavenly City. A ghost can certainly help investigations and The Parables of the Beatitudes gives us the world the ghost private detective. The murderers are part of a secret organization called the White Army (le Armee Blanc), centered in New Orleans, but rooted in Medieval Europe and the Children’s Crusades. Each clue leads to a beatitude and each chapter defines the novel: The Pure of Heart, The Persecuted, The Merciful, The Sorrowful, The Peacemakers, The Meek, The Poor in Spirit, and Those Who Hunger and Thirst for Justice. The Parable of the Beatitudes is thus a study of good and evil, and that act, the murder of innocent children, which encompasses all of the seven deadly sins. Who then can better perform acts of goodness and compassion than those who have suffered? Pinch and Scrimp- a ghost and a voodoo princess?The work was critiqued by Mary Gordon and Kathryn Davis at the Skidmore Summer Writers Institute and was hailed as a work of fine writing, crossing from genre fiction to literature. Also, The Parable of the Beatitudes was a finalist in the 2001 William Faulkner Novel-in-Progress Competition (then titled The Foster Child Murders).Book II in The New Orleans Trilogy, The Book Burners (shortly after the deluge) is almost completed, and book III, Almost Paradise (years after the deluge), is in outline form.My short stories have been published in literary journals such as Big Muddy: AJournal of The Mississippi River Valley (East Missouri University), The Bishop’s HouseReview (Duke), The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Nantahala, Milestone,Identity Theory, Southern Hum, Stone Table Review and Our Stories. I have also published articles in such journals as Mystery Readers International. I am recipient of the Paris Writers’ Institute Scholarship for study in Paris, France and a Fellowship for study with the Summer Literary Seminars in St. Petersburg, Russia. I studied writing at Skidmore (where I worked with Mary Gordon and Marilynne Robinson), Duke, and the Bread Loaf Writers ConferenceI was born and raised in South Louisiana and lived the greater part of my life in New Orleans.Email me at lynlejeune@cox.net for a FREE ATTACHMENT OF WHITE ARMY AND FEEL FREE TO FORWARD IT TO YOUR FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES.Lyn
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