Burke Is Back

It's always a treat when one of my favorite authors has a new book coming out. James Lee Burke has written some of the most memorable characters and atmospheric locales in American literature. From Hackberry and Billy Bob Holland to some of the great villians. He writes bad guys better than anyone. Characters layered with evil that don't come off as cartoonish. But his two greatest creations are Dave Robicheaux and Clete Purcell. We first met the two alcoholic New Orleans cops in 1987's “The Neon Rain. In 22 novels since they have battled their demons and the scum of south Louisiana using sometimes morally dubious means leveled with a strong dose of self-scrutiny. (Well, Dave more than Clete). The writing is breathtaking in its descriptions. You can smell the magnolias, see the fish rising to the surface to feed in Bayou Teche, feel the live oaks sway in a sudden rainstorm.  The words seem to play in your ears like the sweet jazz/blues he savors.I only read a chapter or two at a time to make the books last as long as possible.  I hope you discover the magic of Burke yourself and envy those of you who can start at the beginning and experience it all for the first time.

Even his Facebook posts seem to jump off the page. Here is his description of the new book…”A Private Cathedral”

Robicheaux, The New Iberia Blues, and A Private Cathedral are intended as a trilogy dealing with the times in which we live and my feelings about the great mysteries that beset us for most of lives. I am in my eighties, but the passage of the years has left me with little knowledge and less wisdom, at least when I try to deal with the questions whose answers seem on the edge of my vision but escape into the light when I try to touch them.

Today my greatest fear is not mortality; it is the history that is aborning in our presence. I believe its origins go back to the 1830s and the nativist movement and the No Nothing Party. There is a violent strain in our revolutionary culture that we fostered and buried and exhumed periodically, as though collectively benighting ourselves in anticipation of a figure who would commit deeds we were not willing to commit on our own.

The prototypes are Huey Long, Joseph McCarthy, and George Wallace. In 1948 I sold barbecue tickets door-to-door for Senator Strom Thurman. I remember the rebel-yells at that barbecue. But even at that young age, I knew I was listening to the voice of rage and not a tribute to the courage of the boys in butternut who went up Cemetery Ridge or who died at Shiloh.

In A Private Cathedral, which is set before 9/11, Dave Robicheaux has a premonition that disturbs him deeply, as though he has stepped back into a Homeric time. He is haunted by his experiences in war, and even more troubled by the unnecessary cruelty he has seen in civilian life. As a consequence, he opens a door into the sixteenth century, and he and Clete Purcel find themselves confronted by a time-traveler named Gideon Richetti, a man who in the name of King and Queen and religion and God committed acts that make a person weep if he thinks too long about them.

But in his confrontation with Gideon, Dave learns that perhaps time is not sequential, that perhaps all history occurs simultaneously, that myth is not myth at all, that instead we are all part of the same drama, the dead, the living, and unborn, holograms that exist inside the mind of God. Shakespeare said all power lies in our dreams. Milton in his blindness knew illumination only in sleep and woke at dawn to darkness. William Faulkner said that the past is not even the past. But Dave and Clete take it a step further and come to learn that perhaps the past can be changed by the resilience of the human spirit and the lights of pity and mercy we see reflected in the eyes of those whom we love and who love us in turn.

I think this book is the best in the Louisiana series. I hope you like it. As I have said, you’re a grand group and it’s an honor to be among you.

Best,

Jim

https://www.jamesleeburke.com/books/a-private-cathedral/