Flags on the Bayou, James Lee Burke
Flags on the Bayou, James Lee Burke
List: $25.99 | Sale: $18.20
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Flags on the Bayou

Author: James Lee Burke

Narrator: MacLeod Andrews, Michael Crouch, Dana Gourrier, Marin Ireland, January LaVoy, Ray Porter

Unabridged: 9 hr 15 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 07/11/2023


Synopsis

Winner of the 2024 Edgar Award for Best Novel!

From American master James Lee Burke comes a novel set in Civil War-era Louisiana as the South transforms and a brilliant cast of characters—enslaved and free women, plantation gentry, and battle-weary Confederate and Union soldiers—are caught in the maelstrom.

In the fall of 1863, the Union army is in control of the Mississippi river. Much of Louisiana, including New Orleans and Baton Rouge, is occupied. The Confederate army is in disarray, corrupt structures are falling apart, and enslaved men and women are beginning to glimpse freedom.

When Hannah Laveau, a formerly enslaved woman working on the Lufkin plantation, is accused of murder, she goes on the run with Florence Milton, an abolitionist schoolteacher, dodging the local constable and the slavecatchers that prowl the bayous. Wade Lufkin, haunted by what he observed—and did—as a surgeon on the battlefield, has returned to his uncle’s plantation to convalesce, where he becomes enraptured by Hannah. Flags on the Bayou is an engaging, action-packed narrative that includes a duel that ends in disaster, a brutal encounter with the local Union commander, repeated skirmishes with Confederate irregulars led by a diseased and probably deranged colonel, and a powerful story of love blossoming between an unlikely pair. As the story unfolds, it illuminates a past that reflects our present in sharp relief.

James Lee Burke, whose “evocative prose remains a thing of reliably fierce wonder” (Entertainment Weekly), expertly renders the rich Louisiana landscape, from the sunsets on the Mississippi River to the dingy saloons of New Orleans to the tree-lined shores of the bayou and the cottonmouth snakes that dwell in its depths. Powerful and deeply moving, Flags on the Bayou is a story of tragic acts of war, class divisions upended, and love enduring through it all.

About James Lee Burke

American mystery author, James Lee Burke, was born in Houston, Texas, explaining why most of the lead characters in his novels are Texan. He has won two Edgar awards, which is a very rare experience, and is a bestselling author of two short story collections and over thirty novels. Burke is best known for his Dave Robicheaux series. His Edgar Awards were for Black Cherry and Cimarron Rose. Two of his series were made into screen plays with each movie having a-list actors playing the Robicheaux character (Alec Baldwin - Heaven's Prisoners, and Tommy Lee Jones- In the Electric Mist).

A writer must usually hold down other employment while they attempt to gain a degree of following readers. Burke's various jobs included.......truck driver, newspaper reporter, social worker, land surveyor, unemployment system employee, Job Corps worker, teacher, and finally, novelist.

Burke lives in Montana with his wife, Pearl, two daughters, and four grandchildren. His favorite advice was given by Irving Stone, when Burke was nineteen.......... "Never write a story to pay your gas bill......if you do, be assured your utilities will be turned off".


Reviews

Goodreads review by Canadian Jen on August 27, 2023

JLB is legendary when it comes to delivering a southern gritty narrative. This takes place during the civil war in 1863, Louisiana. We have a slave who is being hunted down because some say she’s a witch and a murderess. A nephew who has a crush on her and is disfigured by initiating a dual for her.......more

Goodreads review by Andrew on July 07, 2024

Set in Louisiana midway through the American Civil War, Burke introduces us to a colourful band of characters, including: a beautiful enslaved woman who may have committed murder and might also be a practitioner of voodoo, a syphilitic commander of renegade Confederate troops who is suffering from c......more

Goodreads review by Barbara on April 17, 2025

Author James Lee Burke, who pens the Detective Dave Robicheaux series and the Holland Family Saga books, often addresses good vs. evil in his novels. In 'Flags on the Bayou', a standalone novel about the Civil War, Burke once again focuses on the malevolence in humanity, exacerbated by the institute......more

Goodreads review by Michael on May 02, 2024

** Congratulations to James Lee Burke and "Flags on the Bayou" for winning the Edgar Award for Best Novel in 2023. Third time he has won. ** Ways of War “It’s meant to be a historical book, and it is meant to be about today. The same monsters are still out there.” James Lee Burke has recreated the hel......more

Goodreads review by Sue on August 06, 2023

It is 1863, in Southern Louisiana. There are elements of both the blue and gray armies throughout the state, as well as some of the “irregulars” striking fear in all sides. In what feels like the quintessential James Lee Burke novel, we are introduced to several people who will lead us through the e......more


Quotes

"After award-winning author James Lee Burke delivers his introduction, a series of introspective monologues is brought vividly to life in six stellar performances. The setting is Louisiana during the late days of the Civil War. MacLeod Andrews, Michael Crouch, Dana Gourrier, Marin Ireland, January LaVoy, and Ray Porter portray all manner of humanity, including a ragtag collection of Union and Rebel soldiers, slave owners and slave catchers, free and enslaved women, and a deranged colonel and his band of marauding Confederate killers. The narrators deliver deeply felt first-person stories that neatly intertwine, and Burke delivers the epilogue. The unique narrations and Burke’s poetry weave a dreamscape of beauty, love, hatred, and horror—a reminder of the disastrous results that once arose in a divided nation."