Yellow Jack

"e;[An] erotic, disturbing novel . . . shimmers with intensity . . . irresistible."e;New Orleans Times-PicayuneHailed by reviewers as "e;an electrifying debut"e; (Baltimore Sun) and "e;perhaps the best evocation of New Orleans ever to appear in print"e; (Richmond Times-Dispatch), Yellow Jack has given Southern literature its own intoxicating hybrid of Caleb Carr, Flannery O'Connor, and Vladimir Nabokov. Russell's "e;virtuoso storytelling, evocative prose and original conception mark [his first book] as a significant work that we can only hope will be followed by many more"e; (Chicago Tribune). Yellow Jack is a ribald, picaresque trip through an 1840s New Orleans saturated with sex, drugs, death, and corruption. In this "e;luminously haunting"e; (Entertainment Weekly) portrait of decadence, daguerrotypist Claude Marchand becomes hopelessly entangled with both a voodoo-adept octoroon mistress and the erotically precocious daughter of a prominent New Orleans family. "e;Russell has distilled the New Orleans of the mid-1800s, the terrible fever of the title, and the savage lives of the characters into a novel of terrible beauty."e;Nashville Scene