' A novel in three acts! It is Christmas Eve 1910, and in the drenched Louisiana countryside, a band of travelling players is struggling to try and find shelter in a massive downpour of rain. They have been trying to tour a once-famous play, Malvolio's Revenge, a continuation of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, in the glittering city of New Orleans but have had all the theatre doors closed on them; and have attempted to put the play on in the countryside, but have been gulled and swindled at every turn. Then, around the bend of a road, they literally fall over the gatepost of what looks like a derelict plantation mansion, called 'Illyria'...
Only two people are left in Illyria, an old black woman with strange green eyes, called Marie Laroche, and her charge, the last of an old aristocratic French Creole family, the beautiful, confident 16 year old Isabelle de Casteljaloux. They make the players very welcome, and soon propose them a strange but very tempting bargain: they will gain them entry into a New Orleans theatre, in return for going along with the company, and taking part in the staging of Malvolio's Revenge: but in disguise! And so the stage is set for a wild, fun ride into a dark secret, adventure, comedy, and romance...in an atmosphere redolent of old New Orleans, in the exciting beginning of the jazz area!' Comment on the author's website under 'Existing Books', which is archived at PANDORA.
