A name you know. A mood you’re in. Ten minutes to yourself. Start anywhere.
The readership the story was written for.
Hearing that his former love is struggling, Doudouce travels to see her and her family.
A boy shelters an injured wanderer while his Louisiana family faces losing the money for his schooling.
On Easter morning, three children take flowers from a recluse's hill, drawing him back toward the village.
A fisherman becomes fixated on a visitor he hears playing the church organ.
At a Cajun ball, a farmer watches the woman he loves draw the attention of a wealthy planter.
A new wife leaves her husband to find a life she can choose for herself.
A plantation store clerk grows attached to a young woman whose family depends on the planter's credit.
A woman who has feared crossing the bayou since childhood must help a boy hurt on her side of it.
After saving for months, two twelve-year-old twins walk into town to buy their first shoes.
A stopped train brings strangers to Caline's rural home, leaving her curious about the world beyond it.
A shopkeeper spends his earnings on his sister's hopes of becoming an opera singer.
A young man is pushed out of the only home he has known after his guardian dies.
A young mother at a Louisiana plantation sees her husband's love vanish as rumors spread about their baby.
A teenage mail carrier stops at a dance and finds that his horse and mailbag have vanished.
A traveler finds an old acquaintance trapped in an abusive marriage in a remote Louisiana cabin.
A planter's challenge to a segregated school sends its teacher to New Orleans, where their conflict follows her.
A town speculates about whom an awkward young woman will marry.
An enslaved young woman refuses the marriage her mistress has chosen and falls in love with another man.
Sent to work for a Louisiana family, a young Indigenous woman longs for the woods but grows attached to their baby.
At Easter, a carpenter notices a poor young woman whom the village has overlooked.
A lawyer urges a woman to divorce her absent husband and grows invested in her decision.
A wet and hungry prankster turns up at a lonely doctor's door during a storm.
Pélagie saves for decades to rebuild the plantation house lost in the war, while her sister lives beside its ruins.
A poor market worker supports an older woman from the family he once served.
